


A Nest of Scars

by coffeegleek



Series: Empty Nest Verse [1]
Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe - Politics, Angst and Feels, Angst with a Happy Ending, Child Abuse, Child Death, Child Labor, Childhood Sexual Abuse, Childhood Trauma, Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Not Karofsky Friendly, Physical Abuse, Political Allegory, Racism, Rape/Non-con Elements, Science Fiction, Suicidal Thoughts, Underage Drug Use, Wrongful Imprisonment, not Azimio friendly, not Ryerson friendly, not Schuester friendly, not your typical hybrid fic, scenes with additional canon characters used in AU ways
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-18
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:41:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 10
Words: 26,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24245965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeegleek/pseuds/coffeegleek
Summary: Kurt’s life from his arrest at age 6 to his escape from the Lima Heights Hybrid Reformatory at age 15
Series: Empty Nest Verse [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/863204
Kudos: 8





	1. Initiation - Kurt, Age 6

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for the long author’s notes, but I wanted to make sure you folks were properly warned.
> 
> A Nest of Scars can be read first or after reading Empty Nest - Revised and Rebuilding the Nest. Please heed the tags as it’s the most graphic of the fics. If such is too much for you, it can be skipped in its entirety. 
> 
> This fic is about the horrific child abuse Kurt experienced at the Lima Heights Hybrid Reformatory. It is covered more extensively and in more graphic detail than the other fics within this verse. The descriptions of acts perpetrated upon the incarcerated children under the age of 10, including Kurt, are kept to a minimum and the worst are only alluded to. They are however still there. Descriptions of abuse and the types of abuse increase starting at age 12.
> 
> This fic was not fun to write and is not meant to excite those who have predatory intentions towards children. The latter was the reason I warred with myself for nearly a year as to whether or not I should finish the fic and put it out into the world at all.
> 
> So why did I write it? Because as I was writing the “it was only supposed to be a short one-shot” prequel, A Nest in Flight, I started figuring out more and more of how the Reformatory would work. Not just for kids like Kurt who entered at a young age, but for the older ones who got incarcerated much later. I had also figured out, and wanted to show more of, the reasons why Kurt acts the way he does in the other Empty Nest verse fics. There was a story about young Kurt’s life after being ripped away from his mother that wanted to be told.
> 
> From the beginning of chapter 1, the question running through my head was, “How do you systematically destroy the wills of 6-8 year olds?” “How do you control the stronger teenagers?” 
> 
> Sadly, real life is hell for so many children that the answers to these questions weren’t that hard to figure out, nor were other details of how the hells in my AU dystopian, allegorical verse would work. And every time I thought I might have gone too far, another story on the news or my social media feed would pop up.
> 
> Cheeto Hitler’s administration had already taught me a lot of what I needed to start with. Living in the U.S., seeing & reading news reports about how POC, immigrant children are being separated from their families, locked up, and abused; the preschool to prison pipeline of minority children; & the horrors that happen in juvenile detention centers & adult prisons - it was all there. The rest of the world’s and history’s abuses of children were there too. During the writing of the Empty Nest verse, I’d already known about the abuses in private schools & churches. Lastly, I’d also watched a lot of Law & Order: SVU. It all culminated into the systematic, traumatic abuses that happen in this fic. 
> 
> Additional notes may be included in some chapters, but I think I’ve covered the worst of the trigger warnings here. 
> 
> Thank you for reading.
> 
> Last full editing pass was completed on Jan 19, 2021  
> Tags, characters, summary, and author notes updated in Dec 2020.

__

_"Don’t cry. The guards will hit you worse if you cry.”_

—

Kurt couldn’t see who said that. It was dark in the room he’d been shoved into. He huddled in the corner on the hard floor, his face pressed against one of the walls. They looked like the metal fence with holes in it at the back of the apartment building where he and his mommy lived. He was cold and hungry. His ear hurt because the bad men had cut part of it off and his chest hurt from where the fire stick had burned shapes into his skin.

He wanted his mommy. The lady who took him out of the group home and to this place said that his mommy was dead. She said that bad kids like him who stole food deserved to be locked up. She said that’s where all furs belonged. Kurt didn’t know what most of that meant, but he knew what dead was. And he knew that he wanted his mommy and not to believe that she was dead.

He couldn’t help it when he started crying harder. He felt a foot kick him and someone yelled at him to shut up. He hated this place and he wanted to go home.

—

Kurt couldn’t remember where he was when he woke up to the noise of laughing guards and the yelling of the other kids locked up in the cage with him. Like everybody else, he ran to grab at the food that was tossed in. Only it turned out not to be food, but the dog biscuits his mommy had bought last Christmas for Santa’s reindeer. When a kid tried stealing his from him, he stole it right back and held on tight. The guards started barking at them. He was hungry, so he ate the dog biscuit. It was hard and tasted weird.

He didn’t know how many more sleeps he’d had until they were given food again. This time it was soup that smelled really bad and had white beans and blobs of green and blue floating on top. He was so hungry that he ate it. After he and some of the other kids threw it up, they weren’t fed again for a long time.

—

Kurt was glad when he and the other kids were let out of the cage and into a large bathroom. He didn’t tell anyone that he’d peed his pants like a baby a couple of times. There was a corner with a hole in the floor that everybody had started to use as a toilet, but he didn’t like being stared at when he had to pull down his jumpsuit and underwear in order to go poop and pee.

The guards told everyone they had to take off all of their clothes and take a shower. Kurt was scared because of what had happened when the guards had cut off his clothes and burned him. But they were in a different room this time and the guards were yelling at them to hurry up, so he did as he was told.

Kurt hated having to take a shower in front of everybody. One of the boys made fun of him and of his penis and called him a tiny baby. He didn’t know why they laughed and it made him angry. His penis didn’t look any different than theirs. His mommy had told him that some people had them and some people didn’t and that privates were private and nobody’s business. He tried to ignore the mean kid and scrubbed himself with a bar of soap and wished the water wasn’t so cold. At least he didn’t smell like pee and puke anymore.

After everyone was clean they were left naked and herded into another room. This time the showers sprayed the same orange stuff as before that stung his eyes and hurt his skin. He hated it and he hated the mark on his chest and the men who had burned him and cut off part of his ear.

He didn’t have to wait long to find out if the same thing as before was going to happen next. This time it was a male guard who looked inside his ears and mouth and pulled at his fur while he touched him all over including his private areas. Kurt tried not to squirm when the guard forced him to bend over and put his finger inside his butt and wiggled it around. He couldn’t though and got smacked on the head for not obeying.

A couple of the kids who were coughing a lot and one whose ear was bleeding got told they were going to see the doctor and were pulled out of the room. Kurt had wished he could go with them until he saw that they weren’t allowed to get dressed and had hold their set of clean clothes. One girl started crying and got hit so hard that she fell to the floor.

Kurt hated the guards and he hated this place. And he hated the gray underwear and orange and green jumpsuit he was told to put on even though his fur was still wet. He did as he was told though because he hated being hit too.

—

Instead of being locked back in the cage, they were led to another room. This one had more bunk beds than the group home did and they didn’t put the boys and girls in separate rooms. Only the six, seven, and eight year olds were told to find an empty bed. The older ones stayed in the hallway and he heard the guard with them say that they were going to sleep in a different room.

Kurt found a bed on the left side of the room under a window with bars on it, and started to sit down on the bottom bunk. A guard yelled at him for being lazy. Then yelled at everyone to unfold their blanket and lay it on their bunk and remember which one it was. If they didn’t remember, they would sleep on the floor. Kurt counted the rows of bunk beds and was relieved when he saw his was in row six. As scared as he was, he knew he could remember that.

After they’d put their blankets on their bunks they were told to line up single file again and followed the guards down more grey hallways and into a cafeteria. It wasn’t a lot different than his school’s or the one in the group home. Those didn’t have guards with guns though and the smell was worse. He took a plastic bowl and spoon and waited until it was his turn at the long window.

A teenager wearing a jumpsuit like his own put a scoop of oatmeal into his bowl and laughed when some of it splashed onto him. “Welcome to the Lima Heights Hybrid Reformatory, Newbie.”

Kurt didn’t understand why the guy was laughing until he sat down at one of the tables and started eating. The oatmeal smelled like pee and tasted bad. The cup of water he’d been given with his oatmeal smelled like it had pee in it too. He wasn’t the only one who had noticed either. When everyone started to complain, the teenagers laughed harder and the guards did too. Kurt was so hungry. He had been locked up for a long time in the cage and had learned quickly that you ate anytime you were given food and you didn’t complain because it made the guards mad. He ate the oatmeal as fast as he could and tried not to puke it or the water up. Looking around, he saw that others were eating it too. He tried to pretend that the laughing didn’t get louder.

—

When breakfast was over, the guards told them it was time for their work detail and to line up and put their hands out in front of them. He was handcuffed and then tethered to everyone else by a long and heavy chain. The guards yelled at them to hurry up as they were forced down a lot of hallways and then outside of a door.

The concrete was hot under his bare feet and he only got to look around for a minute before he was told to look straight ahead. What he could see was a big area of concrete and dead grass and a couple of white square buildings. There was a tall fence all around it and some towers. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he saw men in the towers and wondered if they had guns like the guards did.

When his feet started to hurt almost as much as the burn on his chest had, he was glad to see that they were entering one of the buildings. It was hot inside, but not nearly as much as outside. There were a lot more hallways and then a flight of stairs to climb. When they got to the top, the girls were taken off the chain and led by a female guard to a bathroom. The boys were led to a different bathroom. Kurt did as he was told and didn’t complain about how hard it was to unzip his jumpsuit and pee into one of the wall toilets while still chained to the rest of the boys. At least he got to wash his hands, but only after everyone else was done peeing too.

—

When the guards led his group into a room across from the bathroom, he saw the girls were already there. He had thought maybe they would still be split up, but he was wrong. One by one he and the rest of the boys were taken off the chain and pushed by a guard to stand beside an empty metal table with a metal chair. The tables all had a needle, a spool of thread, and a pair of scissors like he used in school. There was an old woman with grey and white fur who stood in front of the tables. Kurt was hoping she would be nice like a grandma. He was wrong.

“Remove your clothes and put them on the table. _All of your clothes._ Undershirt and underwear too. Hurry up!”

Kurt hated the woman. It was embarrassing to be naked in front of other people. And he hated that the guard said he was taking too long and pulled his jumpsuit and underwear down to his ankles instead of letting him take them off himself. After he put his clothes on the table the guard took his left wrist and handcuffed it to a chain that was attached to the edge of the table. He hated that too.

It was the short male human guard with black hair who spoke next. “There is a number written on a piece of tape on your table. This is your number and you will memorize it. You will answer to it whenever it is asked of you. Do you understand?”

Kurt answered “yes” with the rest of the kids.

The guard yelled at them. “That’s ‘Yes, Officer Stanley.’ Do you understand?”

“Yes, Officer Stanley.”

“I’m going to call off your name and you are going to say what your number is. Surely even for stupid furs, you should be able to read numbers by now. If you cannot, it’s going to be a very long day for you.”

The guard started reading names off of his clipboard and the kids who answered correctly were allowed to sit down.

“Elizabeth, Kurt. What is your number?”

Kurt looked down at the table and read it off. “One, four, three, eight, zero, five.”

“Inmate One Four Three Eight Zero Five, you may sit down.”

Kurt didn’t need to be yelled at by the guard like some of the kids before him had and said what was expected of him. “Yes, Officer Stanley. Thank you, Officer Stanley.” He tried not to squirm when he sat down even though the metal chair felt weird against his butt.

When all of the names and numbers had been called off, the guard gave them more orders. “Miss Alfano is going to teach you how to sew. You will sew your number onto each item of clothing that is on your table. If you do not sew it to her and my satisfaction, you will remove the stitching and do it again. Only once it is to our satisfaction, may you put the item of clothing on. No number, no clothes. Do I make myself clear?”

Kurt answered along with everyone else. “Yes, Officer Stanley.”

“Sewing is for girls. I’m a boy. I’m not doing this.”

Kurt turned his head to the right and stared at the kid who had spoken. It was the same one who had made fun of him in the shower.

“I see we have a defiant one in our class who thinks the rules don’t apply to him. Let me tell you something, One Four Three Eight Two Six. One, judging by the size of that little wee wee you got there, I’m not so sure you are a boy. But as that’s what your ear clipping says you are, we must take Processing’s word for it.”

Kurt flinched when the guard went over, yanked the boy up, and hit him in the face. “Two, you will do what I say, when I say. Until your number is stitched onto every last piece of clothing you have been issued, you will remain naked. That can be now or it can be until the day you age out of here. Do I make myself clear?”

“My dad hits harder than you.”

The guard hit him again.

“Your daddy died, same as One Four Three Eight Zero Five’s mamma. Guess all your beatings will come from me now. Maybe they’ll drive home some better manners than your daddy taught you.”

Kurt fought back the tears he could feel when he heard the guard say his mommy had died. It meant it was true. He couldn’t cry though. He couldn’t or the guard would hit him.

The old lady teacher started speaking again and Kurt tried his best to follow her instructions. He was glad his mommy had taught him how to sew. It wasn’t easy though with the handcuffs tying him to the table. The first time he tried, he sewed his numbers to the wrong side of his underwear. The second time, he was shaking so hard at being yelled at for failing to do “such an easy task” that he dropped his needle on the floor and had to go looking for it on his hands and knees with his cuffed arm stretched out and while everybody laughed at him. Because of that, the guard wouldn’t let him put his underwear on until all of the clothes he had been wearing had their number sewn on perfect.

Before everyone was done with their sewing, the guard handcuffed them to the chain again and led them to the bathroom. Kurt hadn’t finished with his jumpsuit, so he was still naked. He wasn’t the only one naked though and at least it was easier to go to the bathroom this time. When everyone was done and had washed their hands, the guards told them to get a drink of water from the sink. Kurt was glad because he was thirsty and it washed the taste of the pee breakfast out of his mouth.

The only boy who wasn’t led to the bathroom was the mean one who had yelled at the guard. He was still naked and handcuffed to his table. A bucket had been put on the floor between his legs. Kurt didn’t know if he had peed in it and didn’t care. He also didn’t see the boy again until a week later. He was wearing a jumpsuit with his number sewn on it and had a big bruise on his face.

After the bathroom break, they were handcuffed back to their tables and told to finish their sewing. It was dark when everyone but the mean kid were led back to the other building and told to get into their bunk. A couple of the kids started crying because they couldn’t remember which one was theirs. There were more kids in the room this time and none of them helped. One said, “Sucks to be you, Newbie.”

Kurt knew where his bed was and got into it and under the blanket as quickly as he could. He was glad he wasn’t one of the ones who couldn’t remember. Those kids were handcuffed to the radiator in front of the room and told they were going to sleep there until they did remember.

—

The next day was almost exactly the same. They didn’t have to take a shower though before eating breakfast, which was also oatmeal, but no pee in it this time.

Kurt didn’t have to be told to hold still as he held out his hands and waited to be handcuffed and attached to the chain. He didn’t have to be told to look only straight ahead either when everyone was taken outside and led into the other building. He was able to look only with his eyes though and see that the guards in the tower did have guns. There were guards not in towers too, but he didn’t have enough time to see what they were doing.

Kurt felt stupid for thinking he would be allowed to keep his clothes on. Officer Stanley and Miss Alfano were too mean to be nice like that. He took off all of his clothes like he was told, didn’t fuss when he was handcuffed to the table, and answered, “One, four, three, eight, zero, five, Officer Stanley,” when asked for his number and, “Yes, Officer Stanley. Thank you, Officer Stanley,” when he was told he could sit down.

He didn’t know why they weren’t allowed to wear clothes until they were told what today’s new rules were. This time they had to sew their number onto four more sets of clothes and no one was allowed to get dressed until everyone had finished and done a perfect job.

Kurt had tried his best, but like everyone else, it was too much work and the guard and teacher were never happy. Even when he thought he’d gotten the stitching perfect, one of them would say it wasn’t and he had to take it out and start over. He wasn’t the only person who kept failing either. None of them were able to do it.

This time when it was dark, he was handcuffed to the chain along with the rest of the boys and all of the girls and led into their bunk room completely naked. The ones who had been there longer made fun of them and got out of their bunks when the guards left and locked them in for the night.

Kurt pulled his blanket around himself and held on as tight as he could. The other kids were stronger though and pulled it off of him, saying that naked newbie babies didn’t deserve blankets. That it was the rule. He tried really hard not to be one of the kids who cried, but he couldn’t help it this time. He hated this place. He wanted his mommy and he wanted his clothes and he wanted to go home.

Kurt only got one of those things two days later. Back in his underwear, undershirt, and jumpsuit with his number neatly sewn onto each piece, he swore that no one was ever going to make him take off his clothes ever again. He learned quickly that he was wrong about that too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When my son was in public school Kindergarten, I witnessed some female teachers watching a group of children on the playground. One of them came up to a young kid and without saying anything, pulled on the collar of the back of their shirt to see what name was written on the tag. It was her way of seeing who belonged where. From what she and the other teachers were saying to each other, it was considered a perfectly acceptable thing to do because it was quicker to sort the kids that way instead of simply asking them their name. This was such an impersonal, dehumanizing act that it’s stuck with me all these years later and a darker version became a main staple of the Reformatory’s guards.


	2. Bad Guards & Strawberries - Kurt, Age 7

_“Try not to be alone with that guard. He’s like Pastor Jim Bob at my grandma’s church.”_

—

Kurt didn’t know what that meant. He and his mommy had never gone to church. But he did know he didn’t like the old, blonde-haired human guard because he would stare at everybody when they took a shower. Sometimes he’d pull one of the kids aside and help dry them off. Kurt was glad he had only been one of those kids once. It had made him feel weird.

It was when he went to the bathroom one day and heard another kid crying and saying, “No! Stop!” that he understood the warning about the guard. His mom had taught him about strangers and bad touches. This was a bad touch and it was worse than what the guards would do to him during the thing they called a cavity search. 

The guard was bigger than him and he was scared so he ran away. That got him in trouble with a different guard who put handcuffs on him and led him into the Commandant’s office for discipline. Kurt thought he was going to get hit when he explained why he was running. Instead he was told that he was a good boy, given a piece of candy, and asked if he wanted to play with a stuffed monkey. The candy put into his mouth was gross and the Commandant reminded him of the guard in the bathroom. His hands were still locked behind his back so even if he had wanted to play with the weird monkey, he couldn’t. 

The guard came back in and took him to a small room he called Solitary. It was dark and cold and only had a mattress and a toilet. He was fed once a day through a slot in the door and sometimes the guard would turn the tray over and take it back, making him eat the food off the floor. When he was let out four meals later, the guard who had done the bad touches was gone. 

Kurt didn’t tell anymore on the guards. One time he was going to, but the older kid from his bunk room that he’d seen being touched beat him up before he could and said that if he told, he’d beat him up again. Kurt didn’t like being hit, didn’t like Solitary, and didn’t like the Commandant. All he did was warn a couple of new kids about the guards. That got him put in Solitary for a week and on toilet cleaning duty for an entire month. He stopped telling anyone about anything after that.

—

The weather had been warm for weeks when Kurt and his bunkmates were told to get dressed in only their underwear, orange work pants, and undershirts. The breakfast they were fed was watery soup beans with bits of mushy cornbread mixed in it. It was the same thing they’d had for every meal for the past eight days. 

After being handcuffed to the chain, he was surprised when they weren’t led to the building with the sewing rooms. Sewing uniforms for schools and other places had been their morning and evening work detail for months now. Sometimes it was all day and they skipped class time. Instead of doing that, they were taken to the Reformatory’s bus, removed from the chain, and told to find a seat, sit down, and shut up. 

Kurt remembered the farm they were driven to because it was the same one they had been to last year. He was glad he didn’t have to pick blackberries and raspberries. The bees always swarmed around those plants and stung him. He hated bees.

Instead they were re-tethered as they exited the bus and walked to a field with strawberries in it. He overheard the guards talking among themselves saying the field was too big to leave the inmates tied together so they would have to take extra precautions.

Kurt dreaded what “extra precautions” would mean, but was glad that today it only meant everyone had to take off their shirts so their brandings would be visible and to stand up and be quiet for extra body counts. He had heard rumors about what happened to the kids who tried to run or had laid still in the fields, hoping that no one would find them. All of those stories were very bad ones. 

The guards took their handcuffs off, gave them a basket, told them they had to pick only the strawberries that were ripe red, and that if a single one of them tried to eat any, none of them would get dinner or breakfast for the next two days.

Kurt didn’t mind this work detail too much at first. It was an easy job, but his back started to hurt and he was getting sweaty. When a guard didn’t believe him that he was just trying to blow some ants off of a strawberry, not eat it, he got hit and had his mouth forced open and searched. Then the guard pulled down his pants and underwear and searched his whole body too. Kurt let the ants have all the strawberries they wanted after that. 

He was glad when the girls stopped complaining about having their shirts off. It meant the guards hit them less and didn’t yell as much. Kurt didn’t know what the big deal was anyway. It was too hot to have a shirt on and unless they were all showering together and he saw their private parts, everybody looked the same except for their fur color and ears. The girls had part of their right ear cut off instead of the left like the boys.

They spent two weeks picking that strawberry field and part of the next week picking another. One of the newbie boys got caught stealing strawberries. Because of that, at the end of every day, the guards searched everyone’s clothes and bodies. They also didn’t give them any food to eat for the rest of the week. 

Kurt was smart though and caught a mouse that had been running by his bunk. Mice were gross to eat, but they were food and he didn’t get in trouble for passing out or crying because he was too hungry to keep working. The second time someone got caught stealing a strawberry, he was able to quickly eat a piece of waffle that he’d hidden in his underwear that morning before the guards could find it. 

Because of those two kids, Officer Stanley said his group hadn’t learned their lesson. They didn’t get to eat for three days nor watch TV in the common room and no one was allowed to wear clothes, even during school time. The guards did more searches of their bodies too and would hit anyone who cried and told them to stop. They didn’t do anything when one of the older kids from another bunk room touched some of them in the same way. He hated that the most.


	3. The Letter - Kurt, Age 8

_“You’re not a newbie baby anymore, so stop crying for your mommy. Yours is dead and mine got taken away from me. No one is going to help either of us. We’re stuck in here forever.”_

—

Mrs. Hagburg was his favorite teacher at the Reformatory. She was grumpy and always complaining about “unpaid parking tickets” and “what had she done to deserve this life,” but at least she never made them stand up and read when they were naked. Officer Menkins who was both a guard and a teacher would make them do that. He hit a lot too; sometimes so hard you’d have to go see the medic. 

This was one of the times when he was naked and having trouble focusing on his school work. It was cold in the classroom and it was hard to sit still. Mrs. Hagburg told him to just try his best. The guard on duty wanted to handcuff both of his hands behind his back in order to teach him a lesson, but his real teacher said he needed his best hand in order to write. Instead he got hit. It didn’t make him any less cold or be allowed to wear clothes.

Kurt wrote the words down that were on the whiteboard at the front of the room. He had to write in his best handwriting because the teacher said it was a letter to somebody who was important. The letter said that the Lima Heights Hybrid Reformatory was a good place and teaching him not to be bad. That he was fed good food three times a day, was learning a lot in school, had recess every day where he got to play with his friends, and that everybody treated him nice. He had to say that Commandant Ryerson was good and kind and gave them lots of hugs.

His mommy had told him that lying was bad. The guards said lying was bad and would hit you for it, even if you hadn’t been lying at all. This letter was all lies, but his teacher and the guards were pretending it wasn’t.

He knew the truth. The Reformatory was what his bunkmate who used to go to church said Hell was like, and that the metal fire stick used to brand their chests was proof. Only they weren’t dead, so it was “living hell.” Kurt didn’t completely understand what that meant, but did know that this was a really, really bad place. He was hungry and scared all the time. The guards were always punishing him with hits, extra work, and sometimes they put him in Solitary. The only hugs he got were from the creepy guards. It wasn’t the good kind of hug like his mommy used to give him either. Commandant Ryerson was all the curse words because he let all the kids get hurt and kept them locked up in prison. 

He didn’t have any real friends, not like he had at his old school. He had bunkmates who all slept in the same cell block bunk room with him and kids he knew from other bunk rooms who were sometimes in his work group. Some he liked, but most he didn’t. There was a new medic who told everyone to call him Doctor Carl. He was nice, but he wasn’t his friend. And you only got taken to the Infirmary when a guard believed you that you were hurt really bad or were really sick and wanted to bother taking you there. 

Sometimes he got to go outside and play, but it had to be sports and rough stuff instead of what he wanted to do. The one time he had tried to play tea party, some boys said that he was a girl because he had a girl’s last name and only girls liked to play tea party. Then they held him down, unzipped his jumpsuit, and pulled down his underwear to see if he really had a penis. After that, he never played tea party and didn’t join in with the girls when they did ballet. One of the boys who used to take ballet lessons got beat up when he did. When he got angry and danced again, he got beat up worse.

Kurt hated the guards taking off his clothes the most and knew from his mommy and newbies that it was a very bad thing. This time he wasn’t naked because he had been bad, but because his stupid body had outgrown his old uniforms. Everybody knew the rule about that. Until you sewed your number perfectly onto all of your new uniform pieces, you didn’t get to wear clothes. He was really good at hand sewing now so he thought this time it would be easier. 

Instead he and the other kids in his cell block who needed new uniforms were taken to a work room with fancy sewing machines. Miss Alfano said they were embroidery machines. They were a lot harder to use than the regular sewing machines and the stitches were super hard to pick out. The machines got jammed a lot too and the threads would break all the time. One of the girls was really bad at learning the machines. 

Kurt wanted to write in his letter that he hated her. He had gotten his work approved two days ago, but instead of being allowed to wear his uniform, he had to stay naked and do embroidery work for the Reformatory’s clients. The butterflies he had to sew onto the dresses were pretty, but he would rather have not been naked. 

It was snowing outside when everyone was tethered together and marched back to the main building where his bunk room and the mess hall were. They wouldn’t even let him or the others who had finished learning the machines wear uniforms for that. He saw the oldest group of kids dancing and playing in the exercise yard and they were naked. Maybe hybrids got used to the cold when they got older. He hoped so because he was freezing and he didn’t think that girl was ever going to learn her machine. 

He couldn’t wait until he was nine years old. When you turned nine, you got to move to the other cell block and into one of the nine to twelve year old bunk rooms. That stupid girl was younger than him and he wouldn’t have to be punished because of her again. One of the teenagers in the thirteen to seventeen year old cell blocks told him you could earn special privileges. When he had asked how, the kid had just laughed and said he’d find out soon enough, and that he knew he would be really good at it. 

Kurt didn’t understand what that meant. He just knew that he was hungry, cold, and tired of being hit, touched, and his clothes taken off as punishment. He missed his mommy and wished she was alive. If she was alive he wouldn’t be here. He’d be at home and she would hug him and sing to him and tell him everything was going to be okay. 

Kurt looked over and saw one of the kids he liked writing “help me” in tiny print at the bottom of her letter. He hoped it worked for her and all of them. He wanted help too.


	4. The Work Detail from Hell - Kurt, age 9

_“If you’re going to survive in here, you’d better get used to being naked. It’s how they like to break you. If they break you, they’ve won.”_

—

Kurt hated being naked at the Reformatory and he really hated being naked standing in a field picking blueberries with the thirteen to seventeen year olds. They were supposed to be picking snap beans with the younger group and wearing their full uniforms. The bees were out and he knew he was going to have to ask to see the medic to get a stinger taken out of his nads if he wasn’t able to get it out himself. He knew he wasn’t going to get any food anytime soon either. 

One of the twelve year olds had convinced a ten year old who was complaining about being hungry that he could sneak beans up his butt and the guards would never find out. But of course the guards had found out and the guards had driven them to a different field, roughly strip searched each one of them, refused to let them put back on their clothes, and forced them to pick blueberries while chained together at the ankle. 

Some of the girls who had started to develop were crying and trying to hide their breasts and other private areas and still make their quota. Some of the boys were leering at them and sprouting erections or touching themselves until they got one. The guards were making the same crude comments about all of them and laughing a lot. 

Kurt pretended not to notice the guards who had their own privates out and were touching them. He was just glad he wasn’t one of the kids who had to touch them too. He worked as fast as he could, kept his mouth shut and eyes focused on the blueberry bushes. Inside his head he cursed the bees, cursed the guards, cursed the kids who caused them all to be punished, and cursed the Lima Heights Hybrid Reformatory.

When the work had been done for the day, every last one of them was thoroughly cavity searched before they were handcuffed and allowed back on the bus. Their clothes were piled in the front as a reminder of what happened when you disobeyed the rule about stealing from one of the Reformatory’s clients. 

After their shower they were cavity searched again, handcuffed with their hands behind their backs, and had to stand side by side while the Commandant yelled at them. It was days before they were allowed to get dressed and eat again. 

Kurt hated the kid who had forced them into this hell. The boy had been in the same newbie class as his own and should have known better. He walked away and got into his bunk when he saw the kid being beaten up after another unnecessary long and humiliating pat down and cavity search right before evening lock up. If the boy hadn’t been spouting bandages the next day, he would have made sure of it himself.

At least he would be learning how to fix cars soon. Everybody who worked on cars had to wear their uniform, even when washing them. It was the only rule he liked in this place.

—

As Kurt laid in bed, he wondered what it would be like if he had a dad. It wasn’t the first time he’d had those thoughts, wondering that if he’d had one, maybe he wouldn’t have been put in the Reformatory in the first place even if he had broken the law and stolen food. 

His mom had told him that his biological dad was “a very bad man” and that’s why she kept him away from him. Stories from his bunkmates and the other kids about their own dads had made it pretty clear to him what that meant. Like theirs, his dad had probably hit his mom, maybe him too when he was too little to remember. Maybe he was a drunk, as that seemed to come with the hitting from both bad dads and the Reformatory’s guards. Maybe his dad had hurt and touched his mom in the bad ways. From the way some kids talked about their dads and acted around the guards, he didn’t think his dad had touched him in his private areas. Men hadn’t started hurting him like that until he was locked up and put in here. 

Some of the kids at the Reformatory talked about their dads with fondness. One boy was about to be adopted by two great dads until the adoption agency changed their minds and said it wasn’t right. Instead, he got fostered to a home with a straight human couple. They had been super religious and were always beating him with a switch and belt. He’d run away and gotten locked up in here. More than a few kids were like himself - orphans that child services didn’t want to be burdened with anymore. There weren’t many, but he wasn’t the only one in his bunk room that had gotten arrested for a crime. Having a good dad didn’t stop that from happening to those kids. 

Kurt decided to make up a pro and con list. Pro Dad, Con Dad, Pro Mom, Con Mom, Pro Both Parents. His mom had always said that he didn’t need a dad because she was parent enough for him. There wasn’t a reason to not believe her. He didn’t remember as much about her as he used to, but he remembered that she loved him, protected him, and that he trusted her. A good mom always ended up being Pro when he did this list, so he put her into that column. Having just a dad or a dad and a mom was a toss up. Maybe it depended upon the dad. Maybe it didn’t. This time, he decided that having a good dad belonged on the Pro side.

He fell asleep dreaming about his mom being alive and finding him a new dad. This one was a hundred times better than the one who had made him. New Dad would teach him all about cars, let him play the games he wanted to, and give him all the food and clothes he wanted. This dad would love him, take him out of this hell place, and make sure he’d never be locked up again. It was the best dream he’d had in a long, long time.


	5. Protesters - Kurt, age 10

_“I wish I could get in one of these cars and drive away.”_

_“I wish you’d shut up before you get all of us in trouble.”_

——

Kurt, along with nearly the entire Lima Heights Hybrid Reformatory inmate population, was out in the large grassy area by the visitor parking lot. Like everyone else, he had the top part of his jumpsuit pulled down to his waist with the sleeves tied to the front. Being able to work in his undershirt made it a little cooler and easier to move around. 

Washing and servicing clients’ cars was the work detail today. The oldest group got to drive the cars from station to station and do a lot of the inside cleaning. The youngest group had toothbrushes and were scrubbing the tires, rims, grills, and other small areas. The guards called it “detailing.” He’d done that work before. He called it “annoying as hell.” His cell block age group was on main washing, rinsing, and drying. The taller kids in it worked on the roofs and larger vehicles, which meant he, being shorter, was washing the sides, windows, and hoods.

It was hot outside and the work was tiring and very wet, but at least the guards didn’t yell at you a lot. And, as long as you were quick about it and didn’t do it too often, they didn’t mind if you took a drink out of one of the hoses. 

When he was washing the bed of a pickup truck, he saw a van pull up to the outside gate. The people who got out were a mix of hybrids and humans. Some of them were carrying signs that said, “We are all God’s children,” “No race is illegal,” and “You are loved.” Kurt didn’t know who the last one was for. Only his mom had loved him and she was dead. A couple of the hybrids had garbage bags and started pulling stuffed animals and cards out of them and throwing them over the fence. That made the guards really mad. He was scared for the hybrids the most. One of them had brought her kids. He wished he could tell them to run away so they would be safe and not get arrested. 

A couple of the kids from his cell block, but a different bunk room, and a bunch of the youngest kids ran over to the fence and started picking up the stuffed animals and hugging them. Kurt missed the stuffed puppy he had before getting arrested. However, he knew better than to grab one of the ones the people had thrown, no matter how much he wanted to. 

The guards got really, really mad then. There was a lot of yelling between the guards and the people from the van. He heard sirens from cop cars, but didn’t get to see them pull up. His arm was yanked by a guard who told him to get out of the truck, join his bunk mates, and get inside Building 1. The guards didn’t handcuff and tether any of them. They just made them all run really fast and get into their bunk rooms.

It was a long time before the guards unlocked their bunk room and allowed them to shower and change into clean uniforms. On the way to the shower room, he passed by the mess hall and saw the stuffed animals piled up in the garbage cans. The hallways now had a bunch of empty bunk beds too. Kurt thought maybe they were for the people who had shown up, but then he heard some guards complaining that with Solitary already full, the little kids’ bunk room had been turned into a big Solitary cell.

Right before he entered the shower room, he saw the kids who had picked up the stuffed animals and cards tethered to a chain and being marched out of the cavity search room. None of them were wearing clothes. The oldest ones had blood on their faces and chests, so he knew they had been hit hard too. He was really glad he hadn’t gotten out of the truck to take the stuffed puppy. 

Kurt stood under the stream of cold shower water and scrubbed his body as fast as he could. He was happy that the guards were too busy and distracted to watch them and make gross comments. He hated that. He just wanted to get clean, get his cavity search over with to prove he hadn’t stolen anything out of the cars, and go to sleep. He had a feeling that no one was going to get dinner tonight, even the ones like him who weren’t in trouble. 

—

It turned out, he’d been right about not getting any dinner. And when they did get a meal, it was gross. No one except for the oldest cell block groups got to leave the bunk house for a week. They were pissed that they had to do all of the crop picking and their regular kitchen work too. So they kept peeing into the food, which normally was only something done when there were newbies. Kurt would much rather have been picking crops instead of having to clean the Reformatory’s bathrooms, hallways, bunk rooms, and the guard areas. He was pissed that the kids put into group Solitary didn’t have a work detail, but then he saw the oldest ones scrubbing the mess hall and the littles scrubbing their bunk room. All of them were still naked. 

When his cell block was finally allowed to go to the classroom and workroom building he saw that big camouflage and blue tarps had been put up over the gates by the road, exercise yard, and a bunch of other fences. No one from that van would be able to see them now. 

He was one of the best hand sewers and Miss Alfano had stopped hating him so much, so his work detail was sewing the embroidered patches onto the Dalton Academy blazers. sweater vests, and cardigans and doing the detail work that a machine couldn’t. After handcuffing everyone to their tables, the guard decided to take a break. Kurt threaded his needles, counted the patches and uniforms to make sure their numbers matched up, and started sewing on the patches, but not all the way. He waited until Miss Alfano had fallen asleep and then started doing his sneaky work. 

After that girl writing “help me” on her letter didn’t work and being mad at always being called Inmate One Four Three Eight Zero Five unless someone was making fun of him for having a girl’s last name, he had gotten an idea. He started sewing his initials under the patches. He wasn’t stupid; he knew nobody would ever see them unless their patch fell off. But maybe someday one would and that person would see that K. E. lived at the Reformatory and had made their blazer, embroidered their patch, and sewn it on. Maybe they would help him. Probably not, but he kept sewing in his initials anyway. No one had ever caught him and he’d sewn hundreds of them. 

When the guard came back, Kurt hid his smile and put on a serious face. The guards always thought you were hiding something if you smiled and he didn’t want to have a cavity search and do his work in only his underwear or completely naked today.

—

The next day he and a couple of other kids from his bunk room were pulled out of their classroom and led back to the main building. Kurt didn’t know what he’d done wrong and knew better than to ask or protest the orders yelled at them.

“Brush your teeth, strip, shower, dry off, and then get in line by the benches. Hurry up!”

Kurt did as he was told, wondering if this was one of Commandant Ryerson’s special inspections. They had just had one of those. One of the nicer, older boys in his bunk room was scared because the Commandant had given him extra attention and called him handsome and pretty. But that guy wasn’t with them now and there were girls in their group too, so maybe not.

When everyone had lined up, the guards shoved a pile of clothes into their hands and told them to get dressed. The clothes weren’t their regular uniforms, nor any of the ones they sewed for clients. They were blue sweatpants, gray hoodies, and shoes like the kind they wore when working on cars and in the snow. All of the clothes were brand new. The pants were made for humans though and someone had cut a hole out in the back for their tails to fit through. It wasn’t in the right place on his pair which made the pants really uncomfortable in the butt. The seams in the pants made his skin itch. He didn’t say anything about that, nor the badly cut hole, nor question why they weren’t given any underwear to put on. All it would do would be to earn him a smack or a hit.

After they were changed and handcuffed, the guards led them back into the classroom and workroom building. Instead of going back to class, they were taken to a classroom on the first floor where the older kids normally had their schooling. Only this time, the room was different and not just because it was scrubbed clean and smelled because of the new paint on the walls. The metal chairs and tables had been replaced with real school desks and the teacher's desk was a lot nicer than the one that had been there before. There were new educational posters on the walls, a globe, and the English grammar textbooks on the desk weren’t nearly as beat up as the books they normally used. 

Kurt stood by his desk and waited to be handcuffed to it. Instead of that happening, the handcuffs were removed entirely and they were all told to sit down and pull their hoods up so that their ears were covered. Nobody was talking, but the guard told them to shut up and pay attention anyway.

“You ungrateful furs have been chosen to have a special lesson today with a new teacher, Miss Holly Holiday. There’s going to be a photographer here along with Lima’s very own Congressman Salazar and TV anchorman Rod Remington from News 8. If Congressman Salazar or Mr. Remington asks you if you like it here, your answer will be ‘yes’. If they ask you if you are treated well, your answer will be ‘yes’. If you say anything bad about the Lima Heights Hybrid Reformatory, you will find out just how very, very bad it can be. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, Officer Stanley.”

“You will also smile and look happy when these special visitors are here. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Officer Stanley.”

“Send in the teacher.”

Kurt watched as the teacher came in. She was different than the other human teachers at the Reformatory. She wasn’t old and grumpy. Instead, she was younger with long blonde hair and a really nice smile. Even better, she didn’t yell at the class and she was wearing a gray and black skirt he’d sewn together on one of his work details. He was glad she liked it.

“Good morning, boys and girls!”

Kurt answered like he was supposed to with all teachers. “Good morning, Miss Holiday.”

Before the teacher could continue, the guard interrupted her and talked to the guy holding a camera who had another camera around his neck. “Make sure you record this part of the lesson and take some still shots.”

“I will.”

Miss Holiday started talking again, so Kurt paid attention. He knew what happened when you didn’t and he wouldn’t be able to smile if any of those punishments happened.

“Today we’re going to learn grammar in a fun way! If you know the words already, feel free to sing along.” 

Kurt didn’t know the song the teacher sang along to with the music on her phone and he didn’t really understand the words. He liked the tune though and the teacher seemed really happy about conjunctions and the other things she was trying to teach them. He liked that and now he was more glad that she liked his skirt. She looked nice in it.

When Miss Holiday was done with her song, the guy with the camera started talking to the guard and pointing in his direction with an annoyed look on his face. “The scar on that one’s chin keeps showing up in the shots. Can you tell it to turn its head and pull its hood down more?”

Kurt held his breath and hunched up his shoulders, waiting for the blow he knew was going to come. He knew now that the camera guy was talking about him. He hated that he’d been called “it” and he hated Officer Stanley. If the guard hadn’t made him trip over his mop bucket last week, he wouldn’t have the scar on his chin nor a large bruise on his chest where the handle on the squeegee had hurt his ribs. The visible scar made the cameraman mad, which meant he was going to get hit for something that wasn’t his fault. 

Instead of getting hit though, the guard tugged on his hoodie to the point he could hardly see anymore and turned his head to the wall with the posters and window. He couldn’t see the teacher anymore, but he could still hear her. He liked her voice and decided to pretend that he could.

He also heard when new people came into the room and Officer Stanley introduced them to the class. Kurt welcomed them like he was supposed to, but didn’t look at them because the guard hadn’t told him he was allowed to turn his head back. The men asked some of his classmates questions, but not him. That was good because he didn’t feel like answering any. The man who was the Congressman sounded creepy nice like Commandant Ryerson and talked to them like they were babies. The newsman was just weird. He wished they would leave so Miss Holiday could teach them more. 

Kurt didn’t get his wish. When the two men left, the teacher did too. He did finally get to turn his head back to normal though when one of the guards told everybody to stand up and led them back to the bunk house. When they got there, the rest of the kids in his group were taken to the mess hall along with the cameraman. One of the human female guards took him to his bunk room and told him to get back into his uniform. She was annoyed when he asked to go to the bathroom as that’s where he’d left the clothes he’d been wearing before, but she let him do it and didn’t punish him for the bother of it. The rest of the day was what he was used to, lessons with Mrs. Hagberg and sewing work with Miss Alfano. He got handcuffed to the tables for those times. When he got back to his bunk at the end of the night, the new clothes were gone. He would have liked to have kept the hoodie. It had been really soft and warm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter came about during the time when the reverend from my UU and the news kept posting and showing stories about groups going to protest the U.S. child internment camps. Some had thrown stuffed animals & cards over the fence, others carried posters. They all thought they were doing good & showing love to these kids. All I could think about was the reaction of the inhumane guards and what further abuses they would do to the children. Did the adults really think those kids wouldn't suffer consequences from taking the stuffed animals? Did they think they’d actually get to keep them? To me, it felt like they didn't think about it at all. They just thought, "Look, I'm doing a good deed, trying to help some kids, and bring attention to their plight." All good things, but nothing that this horrible, inhumane administration would take to heart.
> 
> Additionally, reporters and politicians would visit the camps and sneak video; helicopters & drones would fly overhead. After that, tarps and tents were put to hide the kids from view, the kids were moved to different camps in the middle of the night, only to be brought back later. Then there would be a big show where reporters and politicians were led into certain areas, such as one room where there was a small group of kids in clean sweatpants & brightly colored sweatshirts sitting at a table. Yet some secret video taken of them showed the kids crying and begging to talk to their moms and aunts.


	6. Birthdays, Cages, & Covid-12  - Kurt, age 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It’s covid-12 because in this verse, 2012 is when the novel coronavirus pandemic hit. I had written half a dozen ways in which the real life pandemic could fit into the story and ultimately chose this one.

_“I wish I’d never been born.”_

_“Me too.”_

——

Kurt hated his birthday. The Commandant would always spend extra time with you on your birthday. He would ask you how you were doing in your school classes and work details. Then he’d ask you if there were any boys or girls you were interested in while running his hands up and down your jumpsuit. Then he would unzip it to your waist, touch you over your undershirt, stroke your tail, and tell you what a good boy you were. For his eleventh birthday, the Commandant had pulled the zipper down lower, tugged on the waistband of his underwear, and run his fingers through his fur along the edge of it. The whole time he kept muttering that even though it was a sin to pick unripe fruit he couldn’t help but peek at the bounty that was to come. Kurt hated every minute of it. With his hands cuffed behind his back and tethered to his shackled feet, he felt helpless and small. 

What he hated almost as much was how the Commandant would walk into the bathroom once a month at a time when only the boys in his cell block were showering. He’d watch you get clean and then line everyone up, have you turn around and back to facing front again, staring and assessing each one of them in turn. With some of the boys, he’d comment about how big and handsome they were getting and how he couldn’t wait until they turned thirteen so they could play together. 

Kurt was glad he was developing slower than most of the other boys. It may have gotten him picked on more, but he was older now and understood most of what the Commandant meant. When he was younger he didn’t know. Except for the weird and short once a month private inspections, the Commandant never bothered the little kids in the bad ways. It was the oldest ones he liked. Kurt knew that each birthday spent in the Reformatory meant another year closer to when it would be his turn to play with the Commandant.

It was bad enough that he had to “put on a show” while taking a shower in order to get enough to eat some weeks. The Commandant didn’t like when the guards would touch them because they were under thirteen and playing with them too much would ruin them for his own fun. Looking and cavity searches were allowed though. Kurt honestly couldn’t see the difference. It felt the same to him, only Ryerson was creepier about it and his super sweet voice made his skin crawl.

Kurt didn’t understand why any of the guards wanted to stare at them naked or touch them when they had each other and adults who didn’t work at the Reformatory for that. And he didn’t understand what was so appealing to the humans about hybrids when all they did was call them slurs like animals, furs, and abominations of the devil. Maybe it was just a cruel thing to do and a way to keep them scared. Almost everyone who worked at the Reformatory was like that, even the hybrid guards and teachers.

He wasn’t stupid. He knew what sex was and had touched his penis at times when it was just for himself, not for the guards, and it had felt good. He just didn’t see why some of the guards found the non-teenagers appealing. 

From what he had seen, and he had seen a lot of naked kids and human and hybrid guards’ private parts during his time being locked up, breasts were smaller on hybrids than they were on humans. He didn’t understand the appeal of breasts, nor of girl lower private areas, which just looked flat and boring to him. Hybrid penises and testicles were covered in short, soft fur. Human male privates were mostly bald except for around the base of them. The older hybrid boys had larger penises than the adult humans did and the Commandant seemed to like those boys the most because of it. 

His own penis wasn’t very big even when he got an erection, but he knew he was starting to go through puberty so it was only a matter of time before it developed into a more appealing size. Sometimes he thought that if he had to choose, he would prefer to look at and touch penises. Maybe that was just because he had one and was more used to them. 

—

The only good thing about being eleven was that it meant that he would be taught more about cars. He heard that being a mechanic was a good job and that on the outside there were plenty of auto shops that didn’t mind hiring ex-cons. Half the time he didn’t think he’d live long enough to see that day, but for now it was one of his dreams. 

When it was the girls’ turn to choose what to watch on TV in the rec room, they sometimes picked _Project Runway_. He wouldn’t mind a job designing clothes instead of just sewing them. The first thing he would do would be to ban Velcro. The second thing he would do would be to burn down all of the Velcro factories. It was cruel to sew it onto clothes that hybrids would wear. It was painful as hell when it caught in your fur when you were sewing it on too. He knew that wanting to be a clothing designer was a secret he couldn’t talk about unless he wanted to get beaten up. 

Kurt was learning more interesting things in school now, and there were more newbies in his age group who would talk about what life outside of the Reformatory was like. A new president had been elected a couple of years ago. Some people said President Malia was a bad liberal and used really horrible slurs about her. His friends thought she was nice and would help get hybrids more rights. He did the math in his head. She’d been president for almost four of the years he’d been locked up. If she was going to help them, she hadn’t done a very good job. 

—

“Inmate One Four Three Eight Zero Five, stop your damn daydreaming and focus on your work!”

Kurt startled in his seat and looked down at his machine. Shit. The mask he’d been sewing ties to was finished and there was a long trail of extra thread at the end of it. He put the next mask on the feed dogs and pushed the presser foot and needle down, hoping the guard wouldn’t notice. Most times they did and he’d get punished for wasting Reformatory resources. When the blow didn’t come, he held in his sigh of relief. The guard was new and either she didn’t know how to sew or didn’t care as long as he kept working.

He tried to work faster and keep his mind on the job, but it was hard to. The work was boring and his fingertips had been burned by the iron while pressing a stack of ties. The stupid fabric ties they had to sew onto the masks now because the Reformatory couldn’t get any more elastic. At least that’s what Ms. Alfano had said yesterday when they’d run out. He didn’t know where she was today and honestly, didn’t care. It was the same boring nighttime work detail he’d been doing for three weeks now. Nothing but “making masks for first responders and the hospitals.” In the daytime hours he was “picking crops to feed the hungry citizens of Ohio who had lost their jobs due to the virus.” He was always hungry and had two jobs. Those citizens of Ohio could have one of his jobs if it meant he could eat some of the food he was picking and packing into boxes.

He had actually had three jobs this week, but he didn’t want to think about the third one. Thinking about that one is what had made him not concentrate on his sewing. The images came to his mind again anyway. He had thought his and one of the older cell blocks were just going to clean out the cages. Last month the Reformatory had gotten a bunch of newbies in. He’d had to clean the Screaming Room after the guards had finished processing them in and it had smelled worse than ever. He hated Screaming Days.

What he saw in the cages was worse though. The new kids were all dead and he saw kids from his own bunk room and a few from other cell blocks in there too. He wasn’t stupid. He knew there was a virus going around, but had just been told it was only a bad flu. He’d had the flu before and gotten better. A lot of the kids were scared though and had taken to making masks out of their underwear and socks they’d stolen out of the guards’ supply locker. Kurt had thought both were gross, and because of such, had made his out of the bottom of his undershirt. You couldn’t get in trouble for that as long as your number was showing. 

The guards were wearing real masks and gloves and being meaner, yelling at everyone that it was their fault. They called it the Fur Flu and said it came from his kind being born wrong and the weird fluids the glands in their cheeks and bladders could produce. Kurt wasn’t so old that he couldn’t remember anymore what his mom had taught him about those. She had said that the smell from your cheeks was for people you called your family and the special pee was called marking and let others know that they weren’t allowed in your territory. She had told him it was all part of their evolution and special to their kind. Kurt believed his mom and knew that the creation science that the Reformatory taught was wrong and full of lies. One of the Reformatory’s rules was that inmates weren’t allowed to use either of their special fluids and now the human guards were swearing that they carried the bad flu. Even one of the hybrid guards had been beaten up and forced to go home because of it. Kurt knew that it was all bullshit. Wrong or right, the guards were rougher, got mad quicker, punished worse, and threw anyone who coughed into either Solitary or one of the cages.

Kurt had had to hide his own coughing and almost passed out a few times holding his breath until it passed. He kept his head down and on his work and hoped that it would look like the heat making him sweat instead of a fever. That was in the fields though and in the sewing workrooms. He couldn’t hold in his coughing by the cages. The smell had made him puke. The lifeless faces of all those kids huddled together was giving him nightmares. He also couldn’t forget the horrors of having to move their bodies to the big pit that had been dug on the far side of the Reformatory’s grounds. The guards refused to help. They just demanded that he and the other “plague ridden furs” work faster. When one of the older kids tripped over a wheelbarrow and fell into the pit, the guards had just laughed and told her she might as well stay there because her time would come soon enough. When she climbed out, they didn’t stop her though, only demanded that she get back to work. Maybe she was one of their favorites. Or maybe they only cared that she was a hard worker. He hadn’t seen her since that day, so maybe she was buried in the pit now too. 

Kurt jumped when the sewing machine needle stabbed his finger. When he moved his hand to wipe the bit of blood off on his jumpsuit, he wiped off his eyes too. Crying wasn’t something you did at the Reformatory. He’d learned that the same week he’d learned how to sew. 

He needed to think of something else. Something easy. He couldn’t though. He was too scared that he was going to end up like one of those dead kids. He thought about dying sometimes. Making himself die like a few others and one guard had. But he didn’t want to die like that right now. He didn’t want to die from the bad flu virus either.

“One Four Three Eight Zero Five! Congratulations, you just earned yourself another detention. Get comfy because you’re not going anywhere tonight.”

Kurt bit down on his tongue to hide the gasp of pain when he was yanked up from his seat and the handcuff on his left wrist unlocked. He was too tired and too scared to fight having his jumpsuit and underwear pulled down to his ankles leaving him completely naked. It had been too hot for an undershirt that morning so he wasn’t wearing one except for the piece he’d turned into a mask. The guard didn’t take that off of him. Having his right hand handcuffed and tethered to the table the same as his left one was again, and then his ankles shackled to the table’s legs were things he was familiar with too. After being shoved back onto his chair, the guard stepped on his tail, pressing all of her weight on it on her way to where a stack of buckets stood waiting for the last humiliation to come. She was just as rough shoving the red bucket between his legs and stepped on his tail again as punishment for yelping the first time she’d done it. 

Kurt didn’t know why she had given him such a harsh punishment, but by the end of the normal work detail day, he wasn’t the only one in the same state. Four others were too. From what he knew from his time at the Reformatory, they were all the best and fastest sewers, so maybe it had been deliberate. It had happened more than once before, when the Commandant wanted more work out of them but couldn’t legally do it because they were minors. If the inmates were serving a punishment, that was different and they could work all night and into the morning for days on end. At least, that’s what Kurt had thought he’d heard Ryerson say once to the guard who had brought him in for his monthly personal inspection. He’d had to work extra that night too. Nothing the Commandant did was legal in his mind, but there wasn’t anything he could do about that either. 

Thankfully, no one was seated beside or in front of him which was good because it meant less people turning to look at him and say things about his body. The midnight guard spent most of his time as far away from them as he could, standing in the doorway, texting on his phone, and muttering about his shitty job watching over naked little kids sitting at sewing machines.

There was a breeze coming in through the barred windows. It felt nice on his fur and skin and helped to cool him down. Kurt wasn’t sure, but he thought it was helping his fever to go away too. It was the first time since being sent to the Lima Heights Hybrid Reformatory that he didn’t mind being naked.


	7. Growing Up Is Hell To Do - Kurt, age 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The abuse of Kurt and the other inmates becomes more graphic starting with this chapter.

_“I know you say you’re not, but if you are, never let them find out. Never.”_

—

Kurt smiled at the dream he was having about being in a field of purple flowers and the guy from the Twilight movies laying on a blanket and leaning over to kiss him. He stretched out on the old fashioned quilt and wriggled with happiness as the boy’s hand reached out and touched him a way that made his body feel really, really good. Kurt’s breath hitched when he started to wake up from the dream and realized that the hand was his own and that it was wrapped around his erection. There were sounds from other bunks - low, sleepy moans, making it clear that he wasn’t the only one in the same state. 

It was only a quick debate with himself about what he should do. Checking to make sure he was still covered by his blanket and that the people closest to him were still asleep, he tugged down the front of his underwear. It was a relief to free his erection from the tight briefs and he could feel his dick growing larger. Bringing back up the dream, he stroked himself faster. It felt amazing, better than touching himself ever had before. He clamped his mouth shut when the feelings became really intense and come started to spurt out the tip of his dick. 

He had gotten hard a lot of times before, even before he knew what erections were, and he had started waking up with the front of his underwear and sheets a bit wet for months now. But this was the first time he’d consciously masturbated until he came and he was glad he got to have the moment be private with no one watching. He knew it was a special thing. It was something no guard, inmate, or creepy Commandant Ryerson could take from him. He also knew that he could never, ever let on that his dream had been about a boy kissing and touching him. Of all the secrets he had, this was the most important one. He didn’t even think the word in his head; just admitted that it was time to stop kidding himself that he was what he’d suspected he was for a while now. 

Kurt wiped the come off of his dick and sheets and pulled back up his underwear. None of the other boys were changing into a clean pair, so he didn’t either. Making noise and attracting attention to himself was the last thing he wanted. The dreaded puberty had finally hit him with its full force. There was no escaping it nor the wrong people finding out eventually. For now, it was just him and Taylor Lautner and the really good dream he hoped he would have again.

—

“Inmates, strip down to your underwear. We’re going to be here all day and I don’t want to hear any of you babies complaining about how hot it is. It’s not my fault the Devil fucked your mammas and gave you fur all over your damned bodies.”

“Someone stole all of my underwear.”

“Not my problem, One Four Three Eight Zero Five. Looks like you’ll just have to pick cucumbers naked then. Unless you’re afraid that we’ll all see it’s cucumbers that turn you on. Is that what it is? I’m sure the Commandant wouldn’t mind sticking a cucumber up that pert little girly ass of yours. You are almost thirteen after all. He just might make an exception this time and get you a little early.”

Kurt glared at the human male guard even though he knew he’d get hit for it, then fully unzipped his jumpsuit to prove that he was complying with the order. Unable to remove it because his wrists were still handcuffed, he tried to hide his privates with his hands. Just as Kurt had expected, the guard reached down and touched him while unlocking the metal cuffs. The bastard creep did it again after his jumpsuit was removed and he was distracted while pulling off his undershirt. He didn't see the guard reaching out to grab his ass either, but he felt it right before he was shoved towards a row of plants and a stack of empty crates. Kurt didn’t have to wonder if the guard would be the one doing his cavity search at the end of the work detail. He knew. With how much the guy loved to touch his barely pubescent, furry dick and call them all animals, he bet the racist, pedophile, homophobe screwed his dog too. 

It wasn’t more than a couple of hours later that Kurt noticed it wasn’t just the guards who were watching them. The human farmer who owned the field and one of his sons had joined them. He could hear what they were saying and knew exactly what was going to come next. It had happened enough times before, especially when the weather was warm and the oldest age group was with them. 

“Inmates, stop! Put down your crates and tools. Girls, line up! Boys, you stay where you are.”

Kurt watched as the girls did as they were told. Only the ones who hadn’t been around long or hadn’t worked this farm before didn't realize what their fate was. He bet the guards had known the farmer was coming ahead of time and that it was the real reason they’d all been forced to strip down to their underwear at the beginning of the day. Being topless meant that the girls’ breasts would be on full display and ready for inspection. Honestly, he was more surprised the girls hadn’t been stripped completely nude for it. Maybe this farmer was like the Commandant and wanted something left to unwrap. 

And why out here in the farmer’s field? Why not at the Reformatory where the politicians and business people came? Maybe the guy didn’t have enough money and power for that. Why any of the farmers and their equally cruel sons wanted a sweat-soaked, dirty, and smelly adolescent to have sex with, he couldn’t fathom. Humans were weird fucking perverts. 

The farmer pushed his young teenage son towards the line of girls. “Go on, pick a good one. Time for you to be a man. It’s your birthday and you deserve a present. Only thing furs is good for is cleaning up messes, pickin’ crops, and whorin’. Imma going to get me one too. Perk of the job. French benefits ‘n all. You get to go first, Son.”

Kurt didn’t personally know the two girls that were chosen, only that they were older and lived in the other cell block. One was new to the Reformatory, but as she passed him on the way to a denser part of the field, he could tell from her body language and the scared yet resigned look on her face that she’d been in similar situations before. The other girl tried to fight her fate, but the guard yanked at her handcuffs and shoved her forward, causing her to stumble and the farmer to laugh. He apparently “liked ‘em feisty.”

The other guards on duty yelled for the rest of them to get back to work. Kurt tried to focus on the task at hand and not the sounds of the girls being raped. Their cries carried and lasted a long time. When the farmer and his bastard son were done, the girls were forced back to work. That both were bruised, that one was missing her underwear, and that the other was bleeding into hers didn’t seem to matter. He bet the guard that had overseen the whole thing had raped them too.

Kurt was glad when the work day was over. He suffered through his own raping disguised as a routine body cavity search in silence. Molesting was just a word that the younger kids and naïve older ones used. Even though the guard’s dick wasn’t up his ass, two of his wrinkled, hairless, ungloved fingers were and his other hand was groping all over his penis, balls, and ass. Luckily, it was over quicker than he’d expected. Instead of going for round two, the guard had doubled over in a coughing fit and then thrown up behind the bus. Kurt hoped it was the bad flu coming around again and that the old bastard died from it. He hoped the guard and the farmers who had raped the girls today did too. Not enough of the guards had died from it the first time. Officer Stanley had, but he had only hit and humiliated them. His touches didn’t linger. 

But Kurt knew better. Luck wasn’t a thing at the Lima Heights Hybrid Reformatory. When he aged up, he knew he wouldn’t be at the mercy of just one or two guards who liked the younger boys. There would be more and the Commandant would haunt his nightmares in new ways.

Shaking off thoughts of his inevitable fate, Kurt found his jumpsuit and undershirt in the pile by the bus, got dressed, and waited to be handcuffed and tethered before being herded onto it. It was days like this that he felt he was just as the guards said his kind were - nothing but animals who didn’t matter. He wished it was true. Maybe if he didn’t have a soul what they did to his body and the others wouldn’t bother him so much.

—

Kurt was surprised that it took a couple of days to be punished for losing his underwear and wasting Reformatory resources. Maybe Old & Gropey had called out sick before he could write him up for it. Or maybe it was part of the reshuffling of bunk rooms and inmates that had caused the delay. Intentional or not, that was part of his punishment too as far as he was concerned. He was being moved into the thirteen to seventeen year old cell block early along with a couple of the other twelve year old boys. He hoped it wasn’t before he could find out who had stolen his underwear, piss all over their bunk, and cut out the numbers on their uniforms as payback. Maybe not the marking thing, but definitely the second one. 

Before he had to move his bedding and uniforms over to his new bunk room and before he had to deal with the embarrassment of spending his classroom time stark naked and sewing his inmate number onto new pairs of underwear, he had to endure one of the worst punishments the Reformatory had to offer - cleaning out the cages.

Kurt cursed his lot in life and prayed to gods he didn’t believe in that it wouldn’t be like last year when the pandemic hit. Those images still gave him nightmares. At least he got to wear clothes for the task and the guard who would watch over him wouldn’t get too close. The guards had no problem torturing the newbies crammed into the cages for weeks on end, but none of them ever wanted to deal with the mess it left behind.

Honestly, Kurt wasn’t sure which was the worst job - cleaning out the cages or having to clean the Screaming Room. It used to be only the Screaming Room that gave him flashbacks to his own first day where he was stripped, branded, and had part of his ear snipped off. A couple of times he’d had the misfortune of witnessing a newbie suffer the same fate, so there was that too. One day, he’d ended up witnessing four of them. He was supposed to have only been mopping up the Processing cavity search and decontamination rooms, but there was some kind of problem and the guard who was supervising him was called in to help fix it. Always needing to prove that he was the one with the power, Officer Menkins had handcuffed him to the door handle and demanded that he watch through the window. 

Everything in this damn hellhole gave him nightmares. He didn’t remember much of his own time in the cage. It was his Screaming Day that had stuck with him. Everyone remembered their Screaming Day. The cage was just endless starvation, endless cold or heat depending upon the weather, and the guards breaking down your will to live. The youngest only spent a couple of weeks in it, but to him, it had felt like forever. The older ones were harder to break though. If they had thought the Reformatory’s Screaming Room was hell before they entered the chain link and concrete pen, they were in for another shock of their lives. 

Before he got hit or more punishments added to his record, Kurt dragged out the hose, mop, mop bucket, and gallon jug of disinfectant soap, and got to work. There was only one cage that had been used but the vomit and shit chunks he had to hose down the drain weren’t small. Given that he hadn’t seen any terrified, naked little kids being marched around, he assumed this time it was only preteen or teenage delinquents that the Reformatory had enslaved. 

Pushing any further reflections and assessments aside, Kurt started spraying and scrubbing. He wanted to get the job over with so he could take a shower and hope that no one had stolen the bit of food he’d hidden inside his mattress. Newbie Day food was the worst and the vat of soup beans in the mess hall was already more than a week old. Piss from the teenagers who had the kitchen detail wasn’t going to make it taste any better.

Instead of being allowed to shower, he’d been sent on to clean out the Solitary cells. Those had toilets, but sometimes the inmates got creative. He’d just gotten over a bout of dysentery too. Fucking Pedo Wrinkles just had to write him up for failure to comply to a routine body search along with loss and destruction of Reformatory resources. The guard had better be out with a case of the virus deads. If he wasn’t so damn terrified of the Commandant and if he wasn’t less than half a month away from his thirteenth birthday, he would have reported the asshole. Ryerson probably already knew though. The bastard wasn’t the only guard who didn’t see a difference between twelve and thirteen and the Commandant’s personal inspections had become increasingly more gropey, so clearly he didn’t either.

Kurt winced as the guard overseeing him jabbed her baton into his ribs. How he was supposed to push the damn mop bucket any faster down the hallway, he didn’t know. Maybe if they got new ones with better wheels it would be doable. And maybe if he stopped thinking so much, he’d let them break him already and life would be easier.

—

Kurt cursed the assholes who had gotten assigned to stocking the commissary and supply room. They hadn’t given a shit as to where they’d put anything. The underwear he’d just spent an hour sewing his inmate number into had turned out to be too small. Not just snug, but nad crushingly too small. As much as he hated to admit it, his jumpsuits, work pants, and undershirts weren’t fitting well either. Given how shitty the food and living conditions were, it was surprising he’d had a growth spurt at all.

The only thing he was grateful for was that when he knocked on the bulletproof glass window set into the entryway of the stock room, it was Officer Bamboo who answered. He was one of the few guards who wasn’t deliberately mean. And while it seemed the guy felt resigned to being picked on by his co-workers and Officer Schuester’s wife who was the current medic, he held his own against the inmates. If you didn’t bother him or make trouble, he was amicable and fair. The ones who felt the guard was a pushover discovered the hard way how wrong they were, how very skilled Bamboo was with his baton, and how quickly they could be slammed against the wall or onto the floor. The majority of the time, Bamboo’s face reflected a weary acceptance of his shithole of a life like the rest of them. At least, that’s how he saw it. 

Kurt didn’t wait to be told what he knew Bamboo’s orders would be. He stripped off the jumpsuit and undershirt he was wearing, folded them up along with his spare sets and the pairs of too-small underwear, and placed them into the double doored box that was set into the wall beside the window. “I need a size up of everything.”

“It’ll be a minute.”

Kurt nodded and stood there waiting, knowing his naked body was in full view of the guards stationed at either end of the corridor. Neither seemed all that interested in him or his dick. They were clearly new and preferred girls. Most of the other guards would have stared and made rude gestures. 

Instead of simply replacing his old uniforms for new ones, Bamboo came out of the stock room with them. “Everyone else is busy with the new inmates. I’ll take you over myself.”

Kurt held out his arms and waited for the guard to put down the bundle of clothes, handcuff his wrists in front of him, and then place the uniforms into his hands. He liked that Bamboo didn’t shove him around or tell him to hurry up during the walk over. It was a warm, but not oppressively so, day outside and the sun and gentle breeze felt good on his skin. If it wasn’t for the barbed wire, his state of forced undress, the handcuffs, concrete buildings with barred windows, armed guards everywhere, and the knowledge of what was to come, it would have been a nice day. 

It wasn’t long before Kurt saw firsthand who the newbies were. Fresh out of the cage, starved, naked, cavity searched, showered, and smelling of the orange-colored, pest-deterrent disinfectant they were sitting at the desks in one of the hand-sewing rooms. All of them were thirteen and older, and as such, they were both handcuffed and shackled to the tables. There were less than a dozen, more boys than girls, wearing the usual mix of emotions. The loud and defiant ones would learn that fighting this stage of their initiation and conditioning would be futile. Those who were crying would learn that it would only get them hit, picked on, and have more to cry about.

Bamboo led him to a desk in the back and Kurt put his pile of clothes on top of it, sat down when instructed to, and accepted the act of having his left leg and arm chained to the table. The only thing he had to fight hard not to react to was having a bucket shoved under the table and in-between his legs. He had thought he would be spared from that indignity given that he wasn’t a newbie like the rest of them. Like everything else on this endless day, he had thought wrong.

Bamboo left the room after that, letting the new home ec teacher get the needle, thread, and rounded kiddie scissors needed for the task ahead. Kurt got to work as soon as the items were given to him. He tried to ignore the droned instructions being given to the class, the grumbles of the inmates, and the bark of the guards telling them to shut up and focus. Though he wasn’t obvious about it, he paid attention to who were the targets of the first couple of hits. Given that some would become his new bunkmates, it was good to know which newbies could be trouble for him. 

The guy who insisted his name was Puck and “not some damn number,” and the pair of Neanderthals who kept swearing that sewing was for girls and fairies would be the ones to look out for. Puck had a smeared branding on the side of his head, leaving the skin hairless and red - proof that he’d fought back during his Screaming Day. The one named Azimio had red marks on his arms either from the branding iron or straining against the restraints used to hold him down. His buddy Karofsky was sporting bruises on his face and sides. Kurt could tell more would be added soon to all three of them as none of them would shut up. 

There was a blonde-furred girl to his right who was clearly angry at her situation, but kept quiet and did her work. There was something about her that he instinctively liked. She was a fighter, but knew when to pick her battles. He had a feeling she wasn’t in here for anything she’d done wrong other than being not born human, as many of them here were. Or at least not crimes that deserved this kind of punishment. Or maybe all of that was just pathetic desperation for a friendly face and wishful thinking on his part. More than likely, she would turn out to be just as nasty and vicious as the other girls who’d spent time in different juvenile correctional facilities before being placed in this one.

Kurt startled when a guard yelled at him to keep his eyes to himself and get back to work. At least the blow he feared didn’t come and being caught staring at a naked girl helped him to keep his secret about his orientation.

Kurt hated that as the day wore on his body had succumbed to its needs like everyone else’s, and he'd had no choice but to pee into his bucket. He hated it and he hated the smell that permeated the room. It was another tactic the guards used to demonstrate their authority and power to the oldest population group and the more belligerent younger kids. Being chained to a table and forced to use a piss bucket was another way for the Reformatory to prove to its inmates that they had no control over even the most basic aspects of their lives. 

Kurt also knew that leading a bunch of teenagers to the bathrooms across the hall would take more guards and more time and was just asking for trouble. It only worked on the six through eight year olds. During one of his sewing work details, he’d seen what had happened when the guards had tried it with the older ones. The whole building had gone on lockdown for hours. That was a long time ago though. The him of now wished that he hadn’t made the mistake of holding his dick in order to try and aim into the bucket. The distrusting looks the guards were giving him made it clear what his future punishment was going to be. 

When the last of his garments had his number sewn onto them, he silently raised his untethered hand to let the teacher and guards know he was finished. He didn’t have to see the stitch work to know the others would be at it for the next couple of days. The guards would find something wrong and make them start over. It was another part of the process.

Kurt quickly learned which of the guards was going to use him as a teaching example for the others and to punish him for not keeping his hands visible on the table at all times. Officer Schuester all but dragged him to the front of the class and proceeded to give him a thorough body and cavity search. While the man was meticulously examining every single inch of him, he barked out to the watching newbies that if anyone was caught trying to hide a needle in their fur or a pair of scissors up their rectum, the consequences they would face would be dire. Kurt could see his own supplies laid clearly out on the desk he’d been using, but of course that didn’t matter. Only humiliation and exposing every single part of his body to the new inmates did. He fucking hated Schuester. 

The only minor consolation Kurt had was knowing that he was smarter than the guard. No one had found the needles and coils of thread and other bits he’d hidden in his mattress, the corned edges of his bunk, and overlooked places in a couple of the Solitary cells. As for stealing scissors to turn into a shank, the old rumor about a kid who had snuck a pair out in their butt and had bled to death from a ruptured...something...had scared him enough to never attempt it. Having the guards’, and presently Schuester’s, fingers constantly probing around up his asshole was another level of traumatic deterrent.

Finally allowed to get dressed, chained back to his desk, and sitting in trickles of his own piss, Kurt waited until Officer Bamboo returned to take him back to the bunkhouse and then onto his newly assigned nighttime work detail of making the newbies’ dinner. Normally, he refrained from joining in on the ritual hazing of peeing into the food served to new inmates. The comments from Puck, Karofsky, Azimio, and a couple of the girls while he was being cavity searched made him change his mind. One way or another, they would learn what the pecking order was here. While he wasn’t at the top, he wasn’t at the bottom either. Soon enough, they’d also learn that Schuester wasn’t the only pervy guard in this hellhole and they would become victims of him and the other officers too.

—

Ten days later, Kurt found himself locked up in the third Solitary cell and trying not to add to the mess he had to clean up. He gave up trying to fight the thoughts flooding into his head. In only two days he was going to turn thirteen and the Commandant’s rule about not touching the younger kids would be gone. The touching would get worse, and if Ryerson found out his deepest secret this place would become an even greater never-ending nightmare. He needed to figure out a way to keep that from happening. Maybe he could stare at the girls more or find one who was willing to make out with him. Schuester certainly liked it when the boys made out with the girls in the showers. And if the guard thought he was straight and reported it to the Commandant then maybe...

Kurt jumped when the guard on duty pounded on the door and told him to either hurry up or he could stay and rot in there for the rest of the week. The idea wasn’t actually that unpleasant of a one, but he was looking forward to tomorrow's classes. With his new cell block had come new teachers and Miss Castle had immediately become his favorite. She was the only thing to look forward to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know that cucumbers aren’t harvested in April in Ohio. I have a website that I reference for such things. However, asparagus, leafy greens, and kohlrabi wouldn’t have pulled the same punch. So picking cucumbers on a hot April day it is and let’s chalk it up to global warming.
> 
> Apologies if the timing isn't quite right in this chapter. I did try.


	8. Resistance is Futile - Kurt, age 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The one thing about writing this political allegory verse over the past three years is that every time I think I’ve gone too far, the news proves me wrong. On a similar note, sometimes I think I went too far with Schuester. But then I think, no, if put into that kind of power position, there’s a chance he would do those things when confronted by a teenage inmate who refused to accept his power over them. Sadly, this type of abuse does happen in prisons (adult and juvenile) and to trafficked children. As such, I’ve left it all in.

—

_“Welcome to the Commandant’s preferred cell block. Don’t be surprised if he picks you as one of his favorites.”_

—

Kurt had thought that with the new group of teenagers to play with, Commandant Ryerson would have forgotten about his birthday. Unfortunately for him, the bastard hadn’t. Just as he had finished drying off after taking a shower and was about to get dressed, Officer Schuester stopped him. “No underwear, no undershirt, just the jumpsuit. The Commandant wants to wish you a very happy birthday, One Four Three Eight Zero Five.”

Kurt did as ordered, trying to ignore the vulgar comments and slurs being thrown his way. He gritted his teeth and tightened his muscles hoping that the acts would hide his trembling as Schuester forced his arms behind his back, handcuffed his wrists, shackled his ankles, and even going so far as to tether his tail to the chain that joined them both. There was no escaping his fate.

The Commandant took his time playing with him, slowly unzipping his jumpsuit, spreading it apart and off his shoulders, running his hands up and down and across his bare chest and arms, commenting on the muscles he’d developed. Then the Commandant got to the parts “Daddy has been wanting to touch for a long, long time.” Only Ryerson had touched him there before - over his underwear last month, the three months before that, and the years of super close touching prior to those times. Guess the age thirteen rule only applied to his naked dick. With the last bit of zipper now pulled down, he was fully exposed. 

Kurt tried to close his eyes, but the Commandant insisted that he watch in order to learn how “Daddy likes to be touched in the same ways.” The Commandant had his own pants undone and pale, hairless erection and saggy balls on full display. Kurt watched as he was stroked and fondled and cursed his body for responding to the human’s touches. Urged on by his swollen dick and “being so very good and docile for Daddy” Ryerson uncuffed one of his hands so the favor could be returned. 

When they were both close to coming, one involuntarily, one not, Kurt was forced onto his knees and a dick was shoved into his mouth. When he began to choke and his teeth scraped against it, his head was yanked back and a strong hand closed around his throat. The message was crystal clear. Kurt opened his mouth wider, performed as instructed, and tried not to vomit as the Commandant’s come shot down his throat. 

He hated birthdays.

—

A few weeks ago, Kurt had learned that there were other things to hate about getting older and being moved early into one of the thirteen to seventeen year old bunk rooms. There were new guards like Officer Suzy Pepper whose only goals in life seemed to be stalking Officer Will “Creepy Schue” Schuester and punishing any inmate who so much as glared his way let alone out right defied him. He’d heard that Officer Roz Washington had been an Olympic synchronized swimming coach, a profession that had dried up when the plague hit and that this was the only job she could get. Kurt didn't mind her that much. She was abrasive and didn’t take anyone’s shit, but her strip searches were methodical, over quickly, and only performed when necessary. Officer Menkins had moved up from hitting the little kids to beating on the oldest ones. Kurt hated the bastard for telling the other guards that he was a thief, had been locked up for stealing, and therefore couldn’t be trusted. It gave the pedo guards an easy and defendable reason to touch him. Not that any of the others had needed a reason when he was little.

—

In addition to the new round of guards and harsher rules and punishments, it had also been his unlucky fate to get stuck with the newbies and have to prove to both them and the current occupants of his bunk room and cell block that he was an experienced lifer and not some newbie baby ripe for abuse. They tried to steal his blanket, tried to steal his clothes, tried to steal his food. Tried to beat him up. Most learned to stop trying when he fought back. He still wasn’t as tall as most his age, but he was more wiry than scrawny, knew how to fight dirty, and unlike the newbies, hadn’t been broken down and starved for over a month in the Cage. 

Fighting got him in trouble with the guards, but it was necessary to prove his place in the pecking order. Some of the newbies had been harder to teach that lesson to. Noah “Puck” Puckerman was one of them. Ever since Schuester had body and cavity searched him in front of the newbie class, the guy hadn’t let up. Karofsky and Azimio hadn’t either, but today it seemed to be Puckerman’s turn to harass him. 

Puck’s first mistake had been being dumb enough to try stealing an ATM which had landed him in the Lima Heights Hybrid Reformatory. His second mistake had been erroneously thinking that he could become king of the place by swearing that he was a badass and that his mohawk was by choice and not a product of his Screaming Day. He set out to prove his “total badassery” by shoving weaker appearing inmates out of line at meal times, into garbage bins, and knocking over their trays if they’d managed to get their food in peace.

Kurt put up with it the first time because both Menkins and Schuester had been on duty and he wasn’t up for the punishment they’d give him while ignoring what Puckerman had done. The second time, it was Officer Washington watching over the mess hall, and while she was busy dealing with a problem in the kitchen, Kurt got his chance to prove that he wasn’t weak and wasn’t without skills. After a firm foot on Puck’s tail so he couldn’t stand up from the table, a glare that should have caught his face on fire, and a low-growled, “Your waffles will always be mine,” Kurt had picked up the delinquent's breakfast, ate it in front of him, and then walked away, smug in the knowledge that he wasn’t going to be the one stripping for the guards that night just to get some food. 

The act hadn’t worked on Karofsky and Azimio, but at least with Puck, the guy had been somewhat cowed and the two had an unspoken rivals’ agreement to stay away from each other ever since. 

The rest of the newbies and longer term inmates in his bunk room were the usual mix of trouble and terrified. Puckerman, Karofsky, and Azimio weren’t the only juvenile delinquents who had committed real crimes instead of himself who had been locked up for stealing a fucking donut. He wasn’t the only victim of racist humans who wanted every hybrid dead or locked away either. Many were only there because the foster care and immigration systems didn’t want to waste money on housing hybrids. Some had been kicked out by their families when they’d come out. Others had run away from home for their own reasons and been caught. 

The newbies who had never committed a crime in their life were the most unpredictable. Some broke really quickly. Some would cry so much that the guards would hit and humiliate them even more just to have a bit of fun. Some would act as tough as the ones who had records. Those were the ones you had to watch out for. In his previous bunk room, Kurt had the misfortune of encountering a few and acquiring the scars to prove it. The guards enjoyed the challenge of breaking those kids too. 

All of it was the reason why he was scrubbing down Solitary so much and had a feeling that pretty soon, he was going to be locked in it more often.

—

Kurt hated having to shower in front of everyone. He always had. Now that he was in the oldest cell block and with a new set of guards who loved the teenagers, he hated it even more. He hated the catcalls. Hated the demands to put on a show and how his shivering from the cold water and the simple act of washing himself clean turned them on. Hated how if you faced the bathroom wall too long you’d get yelled at for trying to hide contraband. Getting accused of that meant a long and thorough pat down and cavity search. If you mouthed off during any of it, your bunk was searched and clothing tossed about. He’d lost precious undergarments that way and was trying to hold off asking for more. 

He was only thirteen. His dick wasn’t that big and while he had muscles, he was nowhere near as developed as the older guys in that aspect too. Half of the girls hadn’t developed as fully either, yet the guards didn’t mind that at all. They were all watched and touched and encouraged to touch either other and themselves while the guards jerked off. 

Schuester was the one of the worst. He called it “sexy shower time.” If you put on a good enough personal show he’d give you extra food. Kurt was ashamed to admit that a couple of times he’d been starving and desperate enough to do it. A small packet of “Chronic Lady” was the reward if you made out with a girl. The less clothes and longer it lasted the better and could include additional privileges if he liked the show enough. Kurt hadn’t found a willing girl yet, but even a bit of fondling of one, another boy, or yourself would get you something. Officer Goolsby had given him a couple of hits from a blunt for giving a mutual handjob to the guy who slept in the bunk above him. Schuester, who pretended to like girls better, had gotten off on it, same as Goolsby. 

—

Kurt didn’t know what was so sexy about barely pubescent teenagers like himself and some of his bunkmates, but given how the guards had been molesting them since they were little kids, it didn’t surprise him. It made him furious, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it. He had to wait like everyone else until he aged out. 

Then came the day when he couldn’t wait any longer. It was his fourth Ryerson raping since he’d turned thirteen and this time his creepy monkeys and porcelain dolls had been set around the office to watch. The experience had been even more nightmare creating and vomit inducing than the first private inspection with the Commandant. Still tasting the man’s come on his tongue, he’d vomited up breakfast during his work detail in the garage and Monsieur St. Pierre, the auto shop teacher with two missing thumbs, had made him go get his toothbrush and use it to scrub his puke off the engine. The engine he knew was broken beyond repair and destined for the scrap yard.

Instead of getting to enjoy the afternoon being taught math and science by the never quite sober but in a fun way, Ms. Castle, Kurt had been driven to a farm to pick winter squash. Karofsky and Azimio had ruined the routine job for all of them, unzipping their jumpsuits, and comparing the size and shape of the squash to their dick and balls. The guards had become livid at their goofing around and forced everyone to strip and be tethered to a partner. Kurt had been saddled with Karofsky who refused to shut up with the vulgar comments and work faster. The asshole had nicked himself on his tool multiple times while sneaking glances at his dick and then tripped him up when he was caught.

When the work detail was done, they were all marched to the showers, still naked and sore from the rough pat down and cavity search they’d been given before getting on the bus. Given the mood Schuester was in, Kurt knew he shouldn’t have resisted. Knew that if he had just taken the shower and stroked his dick a bit all would have been fine. But when Schue had demanded that Quinn, the blonde newbie girl showering beside him, stroke his dick and for him to fondle her breasts? The look on her face and barely held back tears made him lose it. He wasn’t going to do to her what had been done to them both. He was so fucking done with being touched against his will. Fucking done with pedophile guards and being locked up by the worst of them all. So he refused. Every time he said “no” Schuester got angrier. When he turned to finish his shower facing the wall, the guard lost it.

After being slammed to the floor and his hands cuffed behind his back, Schuester patted every single inch of him down. Then he forced him to stand up and proceeded to parade him through the Reformatory’s halls, encouraging the other inmates to touch him, to grope and stroke him to hardness. When Kurt tried to pull away or hide his dick with clumsy flickers of his tail, his tail and ankles were shackled and tethered to his wrists. There was no escaping the humiliation now. When his erection faded, Schuester would find someone to bring it back or do it himself. More than half the guards gleefully took a turn and their time, hitting or spitting on him when he couldn’t get hard for them. 

When Schuester tired of his fun, he was thrown into Solitary, still handcuffed and shackled, but at last, blissfully alone and untouched. 

The next morning when he was let out, Kurt discovered that his bedding and uniforms had been removed from his bunk. When he tried to put on another inmate’s uniform, he found himself being dragged through the halls, beaten and touched and groped in the same humiliating ways as the day before. Schuester traded him off to another guard during his breaks and put in for overtime so he could oversee his punishment for the entire day. At night Kurt was thrown back into Solitary just as naked and cold. Only this time, the mattress and blanket had been removed too.

Kurt wasn’t sure how many days the torture lasted. Wasn’t sure if the Commandant had yelled at him and forced him on his knees to gag around his flaccid cock until it was pulsing in his mouth, or if that had simply been one of the nightmares his mind was feeding his starved and broken body. 

When at last Officer Schuester was done with him, Kurt was weak from hunger, hurting from more than one broken rib, and sporting new bruises and cuts all along his arms, torso, legs, and privates. He couldn’t open his right eye very far, nor his mouth. Personally, he considered those a win. Surely no one would want a blowjob from a swollen mouth and busted lip. Not when there were plenty of others who were better looking to play with.

Dirty and sweaty, wincing in pain at every movement, and told to hurry up and get to breakfast by Officer Washington, Kurt eased himself into his undergarments and jumpsuit. Despite everything, he knew for a fact that Schuester hadn’t broken him. There were cracks, so many new cracks, but he hadn’t shattered. Kurt also knew now that there were certain battles he couldn’t win. 

After hours had passed and it was time to wash off the grime, Kurt performed as was demanded of him. He marked it as the day he stopped fighting sexy shower time.


	9. No One Matters - Kurt, age 14

_“You’ve seen the news. People know what happens here, but they don’t care. They don’t consider us people, so to them we don’t matter. We never will.”_

—

“Apparently, eleven times was not the charm or magic number for getting through rehab. Does anyone know where the key is to the supply cabinet because momma needs some glue.”

Kurt raised his hand up as far as he could given that it was chained to the desk. “What do I get if I tell you?”

“What do you want?”

“A science book that doesn’t say Jesus rode in on a dinosaur and banished Satan to hell for making hybrids on the seventh day of creation.”

“It says that? I should really read one of these textbooks some day. You got yourself a deal.”

“It’s on the window ledge above the stack of pee buckets.” Kurt watched as Miss Castle knocked over the buckets in her haste to get to the key. Thankfully, they were empty and thankfully the noise of her opening the metal supply cabinet and digging around in it until she was successful didn’t attract the attention of the guard who had snuck out for a smoke break. It was nice not being lorded over for once, and it wasn't like they could go anywhere while shackled to their desks.

“You are a godsend, Number...Kurt. I’ll bring you that book tomorrow.”

Kurt didn’t actually believe it would happen. For one, he didn’t have any classes with her tomorrow. The other thing being that the woman was clearly going to go get so high that she’d likely forget her deal with him. It had been a nice moment though and those were getting rarer and rarer these days.

—

Kurt shuddered when he read the label on the box he was unpacking. He knew better. And better was not knowing that the meat was below the level graded for dogs, that the grain was actually animal feed, and the vegetables were ones you’d picked yourself a month ago from the remnants of the regular, sellable harvest. Eating the pest ridden and moldy slop the Reformatory called food was bad enough. Not that they ever got enough. Now he had to cook it too. It was one of the many new work details that came with living in the oldest cell block. 

He opened up the can of “beef burgerette” and scooped small mounds of it onto the griddle. Despite the heat in the kitchen, he tugged the sleeves of his jumpsuit down, and kept a watchful eye on his surroundings. Karofsky had a habit of shoving him whenever no one was looking and the burns and cuts he’d gotten already were far too many. Kurt didn’t know what the guy’s problem with him was.

Actually, he did know. Karofsky hadn’t been as subtle as he thought he was being while sneaking looks at the other guys in the showers. Kurt had let his bunkmate get him off for a share of the bargained for food and weed. During the act, Karofsky’s leering had given him an erection that was impossible to hide or pass off as a normal sexy shower show. The Commandant had walked in right before that moment for one of his creepy group inspections, and ever since that day, he had a new favorite added to his roster. 

Honestly, Kurt was surprised it had taken more than a year for it to happen. All of the boys in his cell block got special playtime with the Commandant. The gay, bi, and pan ones were immediate favorites, but the bigger straight ones could be too. Maybe Ryerson could only handle raping so many of them at once. Or maybe he had room now that a few had aged out and been released, transferred to the adult prison, or sold to one of his buddies. 

The smell of burning meat byproduct pulled him out of his ponderings just in time to dodge having his hip slammed into the stove’s control knobs. With a practiced hand he flipped the grey and orange burgers over and wondered if he could get away with paying Karofsky back. A stepped on tail or foot might go unnoticed. Or he could put two burgers on the guy’s bun and tell Officer Washington he was stealing food. 

Kurt kicked himself mentally again. Gods, if this was the only revenge he could think of, he was clearly losing his touch. Or maybe he was simply scared. After all, tomorrow was his birthday. Happy Raping Day to him.

—

“Inmate One Four Three Eight Zero Five, wake up! The Commandant wants to give you your birthday present early this year. You know the drill. Hurry up!”

Kurt hated this cell block and hated his life. With the others in the bunk room watching and pissed that they too were woken up by the guard’s demands, he got out of bed, removed his undershirt and underwear, and put on his jumpsuit. He wondered if he’d be allowed to shower first or if Ryerson had suddenly become a fan of sweaty, unwashed boys.

His question was soon answered as he was half dragged through the silent hallways, barred gates, and all the twists and turns it took to get to the locked door of the Commandant’s office of terror. Kurt tried to get his mind to start disassociating, not wanting any awareness of the new ways the Commandant would find to rape him. Before he could get there, Schuester yanked on the chains tethering his hands, tail, and feet, and pushed him through the door, making him stand beside the office desk. As his restraints were being attached to the bar bolted into it, he noted that Ryerson was way too chipper and alert for the early hour. What hair he had left on his balding head was slicked down and his pink shirt and khakis were perfectly pressed.

“A little birdie reminded me that it was your birthday today! And here I almost left to pick up my girlfriend from Cleveland for our week long Josh Groban themed cruise without giving you your present.”

Kurt saw Schuester smirk as he turned to leave and close the door. Fucking bastard. He was still pissed that he couldn’t actually force him to join his and Ryerson’s prison show choir, Rhythm Explosion or Nude Erections or whatever they were calling it these days. While he actually wouldn’t have minded singing show tunes and other songs, it took only one practice session to discover that it was just another way for the two of them to perv on the inmates. It hadn’t taken much to convince Officer Washington to let him spend that same period of allotted recreation time on repairing the guard uniforms and other tailoring they needed done. That sometimes he’d get rewarded with their stale, leftover donuts or a packet of ramen noodles was a nice bonus.

Thinking of bonuses, Kurt quickly took one for himself. With his jumpsuit already unzipped and his flaccid dick exposed, he took advantage of the Commandant fussing with the monkey pillows on the office’s couch. With his one free hand Kurt took a sip from the coffee cup sitting on the desk. It was warm, slightly milky, and bitter in a good way. While he didn’t want to particularly be awake for the torture that was to come, it was a nice buzz and he now understood why people drank the stuff. 

None the wiser, the Commandant turned back around and began describing what he wanted. After petting his chest and stroking him to hardness, the man unzipped his own pants and lounged back on the couch. Ryerson wanted a show before his cruise. Kurt could do that. Masturbating in front of a guard while they jerked themselves off was something he’d been doing for years. Having to sway his hips to the music playing and the Commandant making him come a second time by his own hand wasn’t as bad as his last birthday had been. He considered it a win. He also really hoped the middle-aged pedophile bastard would fall overboard and be eaten by sharks on his cruise.

—

Kurt had thought that after seven years being locked up in the Lima Heights Hybrid Reformatory he would be used to being naked and touched by now. Obedience through forced nudity and humiliation continued to be a favorite tactic of the guards and had only gotten worse as he’d aged. More than once he and the other inmates in their cell block were led out to the exercise yard in handcuffs and told to shower in the rain like the animals they were. If the guards were in a particularly vicious mood and it was snowing, they were tethered to the chain link, barbed wire fence and left out in the cold for hours. 

On this particular evening, the guards were simply bored and horny. He knew better than to ask the hybrid guard, who was taking great pleasure in watching him rub a bar of soap all over his body, how she could be such a race traitor. One of his ribs had been broken only the month before by her when he had tried to resist the extra attention being paid to his dick and ass during a cavity search. He hated her and he hated his body for reacting exactly the way she kept forcing it to. At least it kept anyone from figuring out his secret. 

“Dance for me, Fur.”

Kurt did as ordered, holding in his gasps of pain at the movements as best he could. Trying to make it look sexy, he washed the soap off in the freezing rain. The cold didn’t seem to bother the guards with their hands down their pants or privates fully exposed and making the inmates get them off. Of course they had coats on and all he had was chains around his ankles and handcuffs on his wrists.

—

Kurt tried to tune out the episode of _Law & Order_ playing on the rec room TV. Why the rest of them loved all the versions of the show he didn’t know. The last thing he wanted was more prison, crimes, uncaring prosecutors, and a parade of victims that had been abused by racists, homophobes, pedophiles, and greedy bastards. _SVU_ was the worst. The times those episodes played his nightmares were a terrifying blend of Olivia Benson telling him everything would be alright at the same time he was being raped by the Commandant. Worst still was the damned _Criminal Minds_ show. Sometimes he’d deliberately do something to get himself removed from the rec room and put on an additional work detail or tossed into Solitary to spend the night. Watching it had the chance of giving him screaming night terrors. Not watching would show weakness. Causing trouble? Well that’s just what ungrateful fur inmates did at the Lima Heights Hybrid Reformatory. 

He only put up as much of a fight as was needed for show when Officer Menkins pulled him away from Puck. Being slammed to the floor hurt, but he’d had worse. At least he knew the room he’d be thrown into was clean. Scrubbing down Solitary had been one of his work details that day. Better yet, he’d stashed away part of a beef burgerette in the cage-framed ceiling light. Okay, so he was stripped naked, the mattress and blanket had been removed, and the small barred window had been left open in order to freeze him to death. But overall, it wasn’t such a bad way to spend an evening given the other choice.

Kurt retrieved his second dinner and retreated to the corner with the least amount of draft. Curling his arms and tail around his legs, he wiggled his ass to a slightly more comfortable position and shivered in the cold. If this was a good day, he was truly going crazy. Maybe they’d finally broken him. Maybe they’d finally convinced every last part of his brain that he didn’t matter. It was the truth after all. He and the others were nothing but stupid furs good for nothing but picking crops, cleaning up messes, and whoring.

He knew better, but he still wished it was true every time he thought it. If they broke him fully, life might be easier.


	10. Welcome to Hell - Kurt, age 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: for attempted rape and happened molestation/non-con of Quinn, graphic depictions of Kurt being raped, mentions of a suicide, and suicide ideation. It all ends on a positive note, I promise.

_“You were always one of my favorite little boys, One Four Three Eight Zero Five. Now we get to make it official. Happy birthday to both of us.”_

—

“Get off of me, you perv!”

Kurt knew that voice and it didn’t take a genius to know what was happening. He was relieved to see the scrubs wearing medic walking down the hallway and mopped just a little bit faster so he could get to her sooner. “Your husband is in Bunk Room 8 with the blonde, Inmate One Five Six Two Eight Four. Just, in case you wanted to know.” The words had exactly the kind of effect he’d wanted them to. Mrs. Schuester all but ran down the hall to confront her creepy, cheating, pedophile husband. 

He pretended to keep his attention on his job, body language as obedient and docile as possible. Officer Schuester only gave him a quick glance before letting his wife drag him off to the employee locker room. The guard was supposed to be watching the hallway, which included him, but of course couldn’t resist popping into the bunk room where the young and pretty, no-longer-a-newbie was.

Kurt ducked inside the bunk room, taking his mop and bucket with him. “Are you okay, Quinn?”

“Yeah.”

Kurt watched his bunkmate zipped up her jumpsuit, fearing the worst. “Did he?” 

“No. Thanks to you.”

“Good. I hate that bastard.” He went to the door and took a peek down the hallway. No one was missing him yet and Schuester and his wife could still be heard arguing up a storm. The Harpy and the Bastard deserved each other. In his opinion, the only thing they were good for was scoring drugs. Only the one pretending she was a medic had no clue what the vitamins she loved to dispense really were and getting them didn’t require you stripping for her unless the guard who brought you in demanded it.

“I see he’s finally letting you wear clothes again.”

“Much to the Commandant’s dismay, I’m sure. I forgot to thank you for sneaking me a blanket after he locked me in Solitary.”

“Just returning the favor, Kurt. You were the only one who was nice to me when I got here. The only one who’s never tried to...you know. I still haven’t figured out why.” 

Kurt picked up his mop and motioned for Quinn to do the same in case Schuester returned. The last thing they needed was to get on his bad side. Not that he himself was ever off of it. “I’ve been here long enough to know which ones don’t deserve to be here. Not that any of us really do, but still.”

“You don’t either, Kurt.”

“I ate a donut before my mom could pay for it, Quinn. I’m a total badass.” He smiled when Quinn kissed him on the cheek. No one really had friends at the Lima Heights Hybrid Reformatory because in the end, you always had to look out for yourself. It was nice to have someone who had his back though. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had that. “Are you hungry? I saw Puckerman pocket some extra waffles this morning. I could get them for you.”

“Actually, I’m feeling kind of queasy. And don’t bother Puck so much, Kurt. He’s actually not that bad of a guy.”

“He started it.”

“Just...don’t, okay?”

“I make no promises.” Kurt couldn’t help but roll his eyes and huff at the suggestion. He wasn’t surprised when the actions were returned and he was summarily dismissed.

“Go before Schuester finds out you’re in here.”

“Will you be okay?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll see you around then.” Kurt dragged his mop back out into the hallway and dunked it into his bucket just in time to avoid Schuester seeing his detour.

“One Four Three Eight Zero Five, aren’t you done yet? Get your lazy ass to the stockroom. Officer Bamboo wants some help putting away the new...whatever.” 

Kurt did as he was told, trying to cast as many furtive glances at the guard to see if he was going to go back to molesting Quinn. Thankfully, his wife had cooled him off and maybe promised him sexual favors of her own. Usually when the two fought any inmate within visual range faced Officer Schuester’s wrath. Kurt had known there was a high chance of it when he’d interfered with the predatory liaison, but was willing to take the beating. 

He pushed his mop bucket faster and was grateful when he was out of view of Schuester and saw that Officer Bamboo was indeed waiting for him in front of the stockroom. It was a good work detail.

—

Kurt should have known that Schuester wasn’t going to let him or Quinn off that easy. Shower time that night had been co-ed, and even though they all had put on a show for the guards and Schue had come all over his own hand and the front of his uniform slacks, the bastard was still horny. 

Schue waited until the rest in their group had left, holding just himself and Quinn back. At least whatever the pervert had planned, it wouldn’t last long. The second shower group would arrive as soon as the guards were done transferring over the first.

“One Four Three Eight Zero Five, I saw you hiding yourself in the shower again. I thought we had come to an understanding about that. I’m not so sure you actually gave One Five Six Two Eight Four what she needs. I think she deserves more than that, don’t you? Go ahead and take back off that uniform while I help your friend here with hers.” 

Kurt hated what was happening. Hated that he was going to be forced to touch Quinn again. More so, he hated that Schuester was taking his time undressing her, letting the hand not on his gun rove all over her left breast and the top of her head, smirking at her mutilated right ear. He bet he was the one who had clipped and branded her on her Screaming Day.

“Underwear too, One Four Three Eight Zero Five. You’re not going to get away with hiding anything this time. In fact, I’m going to make sure you’re not hiding anything at all. You’re not, are you?”

“No, Officer Schuester.” Kurt shucked the last of his garments and waited for the order to bend over and hold his tail so that he could be cavity searched for contraband. 

“One Five Six Two Eight Four, get back in the shower, up against the wall. No water this time.”

“I’m sorry, Officer, I don’t understand.”

“You stupid furs never do.” 

Kurt didn’t know how Quinn didn’t shake when Schuester moved her into position. She’d toughened up a lot during her time here, not that she was ever a pushover, but there was an edge to Schue’s voice this time. As dark as the time the guard had paraded him around for a week. The human was up to something and none of it was going to be good.

Kurt joined his bunkmate when ordered to do so. Then he kissed her mouth, her neck, her breasts. Quinn was trying her best to stroke him to a full erection, but it wasn’t working. He thought of Taylor Lautner, the Free Credit Rating Dot Com commercial guy, both of them together with him in a three-way of hands, mouths, firm pecs, and dicks. It caused some twitches, but nowhere near the interest he needed to pretend he was having while groping a naked girl. Schuester’s next order made him go completely flaccid.

“Enter her.”

“What?”

“Fuck her or I will for you.”

Quinn’s reply was a barely audible whisper as she made to nibble his ear and hide his cock from the guard’s view. “It’s okay, Kurt. Just get it over with. I consent.” 

Kurt took Quinn’s left leg as gently as he could and wrapped it around his waist, hoisting her into a position that would allow him to bury his penis in the crook of her leg and not violate her more than she already had been. He couldn’t have complied with the order even if his dick had been interested.

“I’m not seeing what I should be, One Four Three Eight Zero Five. Lie her on the ground.”

Just as Quinn was telling him not to resist and her hand was trying harder to make him erect, Kurt felt a body slam him to the ground and a fist punch his face.

“Puck, get off of him!”

“He’s the real dad, isn’t he? Is that why you’ve been avoiding me?”

“Puck, stop!”

“Always touching her in the shower. You just can’t keep your damn hands off of her, can you?”

Kurt’s breath left him as multiple blows landed to his gut. 

“He’s not. He’s not the father. He’s gay, Puck.”

Everything slowed down in that moment. Kurt could see the look of shock and despair on Quinn’s face at the same time Schuester was crowing with glee at finally pulling the truth out of them.

“Oh, god, Kurt. I’m so sorry!”

The world sped back up after Schue’s sneered, “I knew it!” A mad scramble of angry guards separated Puck, himself, and Quinn. It felt like only seconds later that he was shackled tighter than he ever had been before and was being half pushed, half dragged down the corridors. 

“I don’t think the Commandant’s going to mind that he won’t get to unwrap his new toy. In fact, I’ll bet that he’s going to think you’re the best birthday present he’s ever been given.” 

“Fuck you!”

“You furs, always thinking you’re better than us. It’s about time you learned your place, One Four Three Eight Zero Five. I can guarantee you that you won’t be the one doing the fucking tonight.”

—

While Commandant Ryerson had appreciated the gift, Schuester had been wrong about presenting him already naked and made the guard retrieve his clothing. Presents for Daddy were always better when they could be unwrapped. Kurt struggled as he was forced back into the jumpsuit, cursing himself for not being strong enough to break Schuester’s hold, not being quick enough to get free or land a punch when one arm was released from the chains. For not being able to bite, scratch, kick, or endure the blows of Schuester’s and the Commandant’s batons. 

Satisfied in the knowledge that his new favorite birthday present had been beaten into exhausted submission, the Commandant signaled for the guard to leave them alone. “I know you’re going to be such a good boy for Daddy. We’re going to have so much fun together.”

Kurt wished his body would stop trying to breathe through the pain. Would stop breathing all together. He knew what was coming next and hated it when he was proven right. The Commandant took his time raping him. 

Each act was a nightmare he knew would linger on his skin forever. Give new layers to the nightmares he already had of his clothing being peeled away, his body stroked and caressed from his neck to his chest to his exposed genitals. The Commandant lavished the most attention to those, playing with the soft patch of thicker fur, forcing his penis to grow, reaching around to cup his ass. 

And then in one swift move, Kurt felt himself being spun around and bent over the desk. The Commandant held him down with an arm far stronger than it appeared. Seconds after the sound of a zipper being pulled down and the rustle of pants dropping to the floor, there came the burning pain of a dick being thrust into his ass over and over again until the human came with a high-pitched moan.

The taste of his own waste and the Commandant’s come coated his mouth, tongue, and throat as the same slimy dick was now thrust into his mouth to be licked and sucked clean until it came again.

“It’s not fair that you’re not having fun too. Let Daddy help you with that.”

Kurt found himself bent back over the desk, only this time the Commandant’s fingers were up his ass, rubbing at the spot that made his body respond against his will. A pink-skinned, hairless hand stroked his dick slowly, then faster, then played with the tip before fully engulfing his erection again. Kurt wasn’t sure if the “no” he uttered was audible as his body complied with the sickening sweet tone of the Commandant's command, “Be a good boy and come for Daddy.”

Again, there was the sharp and burning pain of a human cock being driven into his asshole. The asshole the guards had always loved, but none so much as the Commandant. He loved his mouth too. Kurt lost count of the times the man raped him in the same manner. It felt like forever before “Daddy” was finally spent. 

—

Weak and relieved that at last it was over, Kurt put back on his prison jumpsuit and didn’t resist the two guards who cuffed his hands behind his back and dragged him to the bathroom. He felt his clothing being removed and idly wondered what was next. The Commandant had already used his body to the point of there being nothing left. When he didn’t move fast enough, the guards shoved him against the open shower wall. Barely a grunt left him as he hit the hard, slick tiles. He watched as blood trickled down his legs and along the path to the drain, mixing with the cold stream of water. If he could remain upright long enough to get clean, maybe the guards would be kind enough to drag him to his bunk. Walking on his own was a strength he no longer had.

There was laughter and words he couldn’t make out. And then there was pain. Kurt didn’t think he could hurt any more than he already did until his legs were kicked out from under him and he fell to the floor. More kicks and punches landed along with slurs and curses. That Karofsky and Azimio would take revenge for being the Commandant’s favorites when there was a willing cocksucker in the same bunk room was to be expected. He just hadn’t thought it would be this soon, nor as painful and violent.

A cock larger than the Commandant’s was shoved into his ass. For a guy who wanted to stay in the closet and kept swearing he wasn’t gay, Karofsky didn’t take long to come. A few hard thrusts, a firm hand over his dick as he was held in place, a few curse-filled moans, and the brute was done. Azimio had chosen to piss all over him, the musky odor of the marking fluid saturating his fur from head to toe and seeping into his ears, nose, and mouth.

There were more kicks and blows, the crack of already fragile ribs being broken, and new trails of blood flowing down the drain. Kurt didn’t wonder if this was where he was going to die. He knew it. Another kick to his head and he was allowed to sleep in peace. The pain finally gone.

—

Solitary. Of course that’s where they’d dumped him instead of the Infirmary. Kurt raised himself up on his elbows as far as he could. His head was pounding and there wasn’t an inch of him that didn’t hurt. His uniform had been dumped on the floor, far away from his naked body. If he wanted to get dressed, he’d have to crawl for it. 

Or maybe the clothing was there for another reason. When he turned his head in the opposite direction, he could see that the cell’s mattress and blanket had been removed. Only the wired bed frame with its sharp metal edges remained. The message Schuester and the other guards had left for him was crystal clear - pick a way to kill yourself or stop resisting. 

Kurt had often thought he was going to die in this hellhole one way or another. But now that his secret was out, it opened up other possibilities, each a hell unto itself. The Commandant could rape him to death, just as he and the Neanderthal Twins had tried. Ageing out and being set free was clearly never going to happen now. Maybe Ryerson would sell him to one of his buddies. Maybe he’d be so used by then, the man would just take the government kickback and transfer him to Salazar’s, the adult penitentiary. Starting over as a newbie, a newbie who preferred boys? He was pretty sure that counted as multiple levels of hell.

Maybe ending it here and now wouldn’t be so bad after all. A bunkmate friend of his had in order to stop the abuse. She was the only girl the Commandant had ever made a favorite. He may not have known her for very long, but he missed her. He missed her stories about the world outside the prison walls, her advice, and her sharp wit. Maybe she had the right of it and he should follow her lead. 

Kurt wasn’t sure how much time had passed when he woke up again. There were no dumped food trays by the door, but that didn’t mean anything. The blood that had trickled down his legs had dried and his face felt a little less swollen. His ribs still hurt like they were on fire, but he knew from experience that it would take a long time for them to heal. As much as he loathed doing it, he scooped up a couple of handfuls of water from the toilet’s basin, desperate to relieve his thirst and grateful when the tepid water did just that. 

Retrieving his jumpsuit and undergarments, he wet his undershirt and used it to wipe off the worst of the blood and grime. Kurt knew full well what else he had to wipe off. He just didn’t want to think about it. Thinking about it would make the nightmares become waking ones.

Slowly, as carefully as he could, he got dressed, and then he contemplated the bed frame once again. The fact that he’d taken the time to clean and clothe himself made him realize that he already knew the answer. Laying back down on the cold concrete floor, he closed his eyes and tried to go back to sleep. They hadn’t broken him and therefore he was still in the lead. He just needed to figure out a way to get a bit further ahead.

—

The Commandant didn’t give him enough time to heal before he was raping him again. From the way Karofsky and Azimio acted, their guard sanctioned beating of him hadn’t prevented them from continuing to be favorites either. Puck wasn’t a favorite, but was angrier than before and Ryerson still took great delight in his personal inspections. 

Kurt had his own reasons to be furious. He had made out with Quinn and let her blow him just so Schuester would let them have the privilege of library duty. It was an easy job and they had both desperately needed the break. 

But instead of eating dinner and then handing out books to his fellow inmates after a long day of oil changes and fixing leaks discovered the hard and messy way, he had been told to strip down, shower, and redress in only his jumpsuit. The Commandant had wanted to play some more with his new favorite toy. Officer Pepper didn’t like the death glare he’d sent Schuester’s way and prodded him in the back and smacked his legs with her baton to get him to move faster. 

Kurt stumbled as he was shoved into Ryerson’s office. The minute he heard the door lock and the Commandant say the words, “Are you going to be a good boy for Daddy? I bet you are,” he started to disassociate. It was easier to get through the rapings that way. 

When it was finally over and he was being led to the rec room, Kurt asked Officer Clarington what he could do as a favor for part of a blunt. Not that he partook often, but some days he just wanted to not care about how shitty his life was for a while. The guard’s mainstay was steroids, but like half of the guards, he didn’t mind dealing in lighter stuff. Fortunately, for him the guy was “not even remotely bi-curious.” Not that swearing the same had stopped other male guards from demanding sexual favors from the boys, but this one actually meant it. Instead of a blowjob or handy, Clarington just wanted his daughter’s dance recital costume repaired. It was an easy request. Hell, he’d sewn the entire production’s costumes less than a month ago. The deal agreed upon and not minding missing whatever shitty movie was playing on the TV in the rec room, Kurt snagged a mop and bucket from a storage closet and headed to Solitary with the joint tucked securely up his sleeve. The high and private time couldn’t come soon enough.

—

The next morning, Kurt found himself pulled out of kitchen duty and taken to the sewing workroom by Officer Clarington. There wasn’t a need to fight being chained to the table. Unlike the other two inmates in the room, he still had his clothes on. He answered the guard’s questions, and when the requested supplies were acquired and written down on a clipboard to be inventoried and checked off once the task was finished, Kurt began his work. It was a complicated bit of sewing, but not impossible. How Clarington’s daughter had managed to tear off and shred half of the beaded tulle, he didn’t know and didn't care enough to ask in order to know. As Kurt had hoped, the guard eventually left their small group alone to do his rounds of the rest of the building as well as perform his side job as the local 'roid rage dealer.

Kurt didn’t have to wait long until Puck and Quinn were furiously whispering to each other, the sewing of their numbers to their upsized uniforms abandoned in the process. He listened closely and interrupted when he was certain they were serious about the topic. With Quinn starting to show, he knew it was only a matter of time. Officer Washington had offered to help her “take care of the problem,” but Quinn had refused, saying it was immoral. Her pious, bastard father had put her in here two years ago for losing her virginity, and yet she still clung to her beliefs. 

Kurt didn’t understand it, but it wasn’t his problem. Getting out of here was. “You’re taking me with you.”

“Like hell we are, Kurt!”

“Keep your damn voice down, Puckerman. If you hadn’t attacked me, Schuester wouldn’t have found out and Ryerson wouldn’t have made me his new favorite play thing.”

“He buggers us all.”

Kurt's ears flattened against his head as he growled slow enough for the asshole to understand. _“Not like this.”_

“Kurt’s right, we have to include him. It’s my fault too. I owe him that.”

“You don’t owe him shit, Quinn.”

“Yes, I do. He’s saved me more times than I can count and it’s time I returned the favor. He doesn’t deserve this, Puck. None of us do. I’m not having my baby here and we’re not abandoning Kurt.”

Kurt watched as Puck slowly came to the conclusion that there wasn’t any other choice. It was two against one. If Quinn hadn’t convinced him, he would have found his own ways to make him comply. He’d already thought of dozens since the day it had happened.

“Fine, but if you fuck this up, I swear to god, I’ll…”

“You’ll what, Puck? There’s nothing you could do that hasn’t been done to me already. Unless you wanted some ideas? I’ve been here longer and the Commandant has started to get _creative_.”

“It’s the damn dolls. Why does he have those creepy dolls?”

“The monkeys are the worst.”

Quinn seriously hated men. They were all idiots. “Can you two focus? Here’s what I’ve figured out…”

—

In the end, Quinn’s plan didn’t need much modification and Kurt was surprised that no one had thought of it before. On the other hand, it was a plot used in so many movies and TV shows that it was damn near laughable. And maybe no one else had had Puck’s Nanna Connie’s secret brownie recipe and the Reformatory’s food delivery driver as her latest boy toy. 

Quinn though put in most of the work. Work that both he and Puck protested against. Schuester needed to be mollified and that meant using his predatory nature to their favor. It meant Quinn on her knees, the guard's pants unzipped, and his overeager dick thrusting into her mouth. It meant showering in front of the bastard and making out with Quinn. Once it was himself, Quinn, and Puck. For all of Puck’s anger at him, he’d given him a decent enough handjob to make him come. 

Kurt hated that the Commandant had been there to watch that particular act. For weeks afterwards, he had feared that Ryerson would start insisting on threesomes. The Neanderthal Twins were continuing to give him enough hell as it was. Thankfully, it seemed as though the Commandant liked playing with his favorites one on one. Either that or he couldn’t control two or more of them by himself. 

The three of them had to be careful. So damn careful to not let on that they had formed an alliance. Continuing to pick fights with Puck was necessary, yet painful. Hard and fast blows to Puck’s face and gut landed the guy in the Infirmary where he was able to score enough “vitamins” and other meds to pocket for Escape Day. As for himself, it meant four days of being stripped naked, starved, forced to do hard labor, and extra special attention from the Commandant who thought he could fuck him into submission. 

Given how much pain he was in during the last round and the fact that after it there was blood when he’d showered and gone to the bathroom, Kurt knew something had torn internally. No matter how much he pleaded with her, Schuester’s wife wouldn’t look and only gave him a couple of Advil. At least she convinced whomever was in charge of inmate scheduling to allow him to work in the supply room with Officer Bamboo. It wasn’t the light work detail she assumed it was, but it was exactly where one of them needed to be. 

—

Four months after becoming one of the Commandant’s favorites, the time finally came when all of the pieces were in place and ready to be played. The early August weather had been forecast to hold steady, sunny and clear. A single day on the calendar that came before the annual Founders Day parade. The day where all of the local businessmen and politicians who had deals with the Lima Heights Hybrid Reformatory would come to get their cars washed and detailed. 

It had been easy enough to taunt Karofsky into a fit of rage, to have him slam the handle of his mop around the guard’s locker room trying to destroy everything within reach. The distraction provided the needed cover to swap out the guards’ usual coffee packets for Nana Connie’s Special Brew. By the time the guards arrived to drag Karofsky off to Solitary, the deed had been done. Kurt had waited with his hands up, his own mop laying on the floor, and calmly complied with the pat down to prove he’d had no part in the destruction. 

Fortunately for him, it had been the tamer of the guards who had come running and they’d believed him. Not that any of the guards who worked here could be considered innocent. Even if they didn’t molest and beat him and the others, they were still complicit. It’s why he'd had no problem with the special coffee causing every single one of them, the next shift, and part of the morning shift to call out sick with a massive case of food poisoning. Kurt preferred to call it “hybrid’s revenge.”

The next morning it was hot on the verge of sweltering and the guards that had bothered to show up for work were either not coffee drinkers or were and therefore constantly running off to use the bathroom. The majority of both types were unusually relaxed thanks to Nana Connie’s brownie and muffin basket - another special delivery courtesy of her boyfriend. The rest were inside with the Commandant who was guiding his very important guests around the freshly scrubbed prison and schmoozing them with better food than the Reformatory had ever seen. 

Schuester was thankfully as predictable as they’d hoped and fell for Quinn’s special attention and extra long sexy shower. Sated with an extra special blueberry muffin and promises of more orgasms later, he granted her the privilege of moving around the cars the inmates would be washing and detailing that day. 

It was during the latter part of the afternoon, the guards slow from boredom, dehydration, weed, and heat that they made their escape. Kurt was glad he didn’t have to hotwire a car as it was a skill he only knew in theory. Nor did he, Puck, and Quinn have to show any skin beyond their gray undershirts, now exposed by their unzipped orange and green jumpsuits with the sleeves tied around their waists. It was the same style that the rest of the prisoners were wearing and helped them blend in. Quinn was careful to keep her shirt dry, not wanting Schuester’s leering eyes following her around the entire time. 

With subtle signals they chose a nondescript vehicle - an older model, four door, navy blue sedan belonging to some businessman's daughter. Kurt would have loved to have stolen what he had dubbed the Commandant's penis compensator, but the Barbie pink sports car was too noticeable and parked off to the side in its own special spot. The thirty or so other vehicles being washed that day were in the outer parking lot; only one barbed wire gated fence away from freedom. A gate that had been left open to accommodate the steady stream of cars in and out of the Reformatory’s grounds. 

As the three of them had been working as a team all day, it didn’t appear out of the ordinary for he and Puck to join Quinn at the sedan as she pulled it up. Only instead of her getting out to help them wash the vehicle, they got in and Quinn floored it around the parked cars, tired prisoners, and through the gates the hot and sluggish guards weren’t quick enough to fully close until it was too late. 

Kurt held his breath, too scared to breathe as they sped out of the grounds and down the long road that led to the prison. Sirens from the guard towers filled the air and he listened for the sounds of cop cars in-between Quinn and Puck’s short lived bickering in the front seat. Quinn was determined to stick to the plan and as she was the one driving at breakneck speeds, skidding around turns that left him trying not to vomit as gravel and dust flew behind them, Puck finally got the hint to shut the hell up.

They slowed down when it was safe to do so, blending in with the increased traffic of locals going about their day. Puck was familiar with Lima Heights and knew an acquaintance who had no problem accepting a stolen car in exchange for a couple hundred dollars in cash and some old clothes they could change into. He also knew the location of an abandoned warehouse they could spend a few nights in until it was safe to head to the truck stop. During the frantic drive to the chop shop, Kurt had found an old map in the backseat of the car and a handful of loose change. It wasn’t much, but the map at least would show him how to get the hell out of Lima, Ohio.

—

The warehouse was more rubble and weeds than standing walls, but it provided enough coverage and such an improbable place to hide that they’d only heard the cops drive by the place once. Kurt didn’t ask Puck how he had managed to get a bag of cheeseburgers and fries without getting caught when he returned from one of his jaunts outside of the warehouse. He was just grateful for any food at this point. It had been two days after escaping since they’d eaten. 

Two days. Kurt couldn’t believe he’d escaped only two days ago. After eight years of being a prisoner at the Lima Heights Hybrid Reformatory he was finally free. The concept had been exhilarating in theory, filled with all of the wonderful plans he’d made over the years of where he’d go and how he’d live. Now that it was a reality he had no idea what the fuck was he going to do.

With a murmured, “Thanks,” he accepted the bag with his share of the burgers and fries. For now he would focus on eating and breathing. Anything beyond that would have to wait a few minutes. Still, he couldn’t stop the single thought that kept repeating on a loop inside his head.

He was free. He, Kurt Elizabeth and not some damn number, was finally free.

~The End. Thank you for reading. :)


End file.
